RE: [media] Bobby blows whistle on inaccessible Web pages

At 10:28 AM -0400 9/7/00, Savin, Jill wrote:
>** I agree - makes it seem like people are out there, maliciously refusing
>to add alt text to their graphics on purpose, to thwart and keep away those
>"undesirable disabled people".

This ties in with the whole discussion about "Flash, DHTML
artists as the enemy" (or not) -- web accessibility is primarily
a battle of education and information, not of persuasion.  Web
sites are not accessible because people are mean or even stupid,
they are inaccessible because people are ignorant and need to
be taught.

When I named the AWARE Center, I was very pleased to come up
with an acronym that worked :) but also which summarizes what I
see as the challenge -- making people -aware-, not hitting them
with a truncheon as if they're London wags who have had a bit
too much Guinness to drink.

--Kynn

PS:  I discovered two years at CSUN that some blind web designers
      were not even aware the Bobby has a police motif!  Unable to
      see the graphics which are the primary way of conveying the
      "English policeman" metaphor, one designer even had assumed
      that "Bobby" was just the name of a cute little boy!  She was
      amazed to find out that the web accessibility site she'd
      been referring people to had a "law enforcement" theme to it.
-- 
--
Kynn Bartlett <kynn@idyllmtn.com>
http://www.kynn.com/

Received on Thursday, 7 September 2000 10:50:49 UTC