Re: Debunking the need for "text-only" parallel sites

> I agree that a text-only site would be a disservice to the majority of
> users, and less accessible to many, if it replaced the fully-formatted
site,
> or did not contain all the information, or was not kept up-to-date.
However,
> it seems to me that a parallel text-only site adds considerable value when
> those pitfalls are avoided.

I agree that a text-only representation of a web site shouldn't be
automatically dismissed.  A paper at last year's WWW conference gave an
example of providing a text-only version of resources which are intended to
be indexed by robots.

Maintenance is an issue, but if this is done on-the-fly or by backend batch
processing (rather than manually - which we know is unlikely to be
maintained) this shouldn't be a major problem.

Architecturally it's a bit of a fudge, but it may be a useful pragmatic
solution.

BTW is accessibility for robot software covered by the User-agent
guidelines?

Brian
------------------------------------------------------
Brian Kelly, UK Web Focus
UKOLN, University of Bath, BATH, England, BA2 7AY
Email:  b.kelly@ukoln.ac.uk     URL:    http://www.ukoln.ac.uk/
Homepage: http://www.ukoln.ac.uk/ukoln/staff/b.kelly.html
Phone:  01225 323943            FAX:   01225 826838

Received on Friday, 21 May 1999 10:48:45 UTC