Re: How to convince businesses to be accessible...

Charles,
	I hope I'm not hopelessly simple in saying that cookies are pretty
efficient at collecting user data ... the only problem is with a family
computer where just one user has special needs ... the user needs to be
able to change settings "on the fly" as well as have "defaults" ..

	Thinking fancifully, a "cookie" could be created that would include user
information that would be picked up by a site that provides a variety of
user options. The "cookie" would have to be standardized, but could be
provided on one of the "register yourself" sites ... 

				Anne

At 12:50 PM 10/10/00 -0400, Charles McCathieNevile wrote:
>One problem is that although I use lynx I actually prefer to get the images
>included in the source - every so often I decide to look at one, which is
>very trivial.
>
>The basic difficulty is that what browser a user has is not a good guide to
>what are the preferences and needs of the user - that needs to be answered by
>hte users themselves. W3C is working on a system called CC/PP (that's easier
>to remember than the real name) designed to allow this kind of information to
>be sent by the browser to the server. And there are in fact a lot of people
>using these kinds of approaches. The simplest version is to provide a link to
>a text-only version of a page (This is helpful to some users but not by
>itself a solution), and there are many other methods used. The trick is to
>get the right information about the user and what they want, and that is not
>easy.
>
>Cheers
>
>Charles McCN
>
>On Fri, 6 Oct 2000, Ryan Eby wrote:
>
>  A friend of mine did this on his site with ASP (as a learning tool - his
>  site is not commercial). He wrote all his content in XML pages and then
used
>  a ASP page to check the HTTP header to find the browser version and then
>  apply a different XSL stylesheet depending on the browser. It was then sent
>  off to the browser as HTML. If the browser was one that didn't support
>  images than he used a stylesheet that left out the images and HTML that
>  might have been a hindrance. It may seem like a lot of work but it really
>  wasn't. He only created the content once and about a half dozen
stylesheets.
>  And the ASP code he wrote once and then copy and pasted it for the other
>  pages changes the content variable to point to the proper file. It worked
>  quite well as far as I could see (on lynx, NS, and IE). I'd give you the
>  link but he is running it locally on his machine now because of lack of
>  extra funds for hosting). Are there any problems with this approach that I
>  am missing.
>  _____________________________
>  Ryan Eby
>  ----- Original Message -----
>  From: "Reidy Brown" <rbrown@blackboard.com>
>  To: <w3c-wai-ig@w3.org>
>  Sent: Thursday, October 05, 2000 8:24 PM
>  Subject: RE: How to convince businesses to be accessible...
>  
>  
>  > I'm a little surprised that no one (especially Kynn) has talked about
>  using
>  > server-side logic to create customized pages based on user preferences.
>  It's
>  > true that many small business web sites are static, but a growing number
>  of
>  > commercial sites use Cold Fusion, ASP, JSP, cgi,php or other server side
>  > technology. It's not a trivial matter, certainly, but it is possible to
>  set
>  > up the site to generate no-image, low-bandwidth, and high-bandwith pages
>  on
>  > demand. With a little additional thought, you can set the system to
handle
>  > client-side logic (javascript) where possible or desired (and many people
>  > _do_ want this) and server-side logic where necessary.
>  >
>  > Admittedly, it's not a quick-fix solution, but it is a viable option for
>  > well-engineered web sites. And for those that don't have the capability
>  > in-house, something like Edapta is an up-and-coming solution. I'm not
>  > familiar enough with Edapta's functionality, but I suspect that this is
>  the
>  > sort of thing it's designed to do for existing sites.
>  >
>  > Reidy
>  >
>  > -------------------------------------------
>  > Reidy Brown
>  > Accessibility Coordinator/
>  > Software Engineer
>  > Blackboard, Inc.
>  > -------------------------------------------
>  >
>  >
>  >
>  > -----Original Message-----
>  > From: David Poehlman [mailto:poehlman@clark.net]
>  > Sent: Thursday, October 05, 2000 6:24 PM
>  > To: Anne Pemberton
>  > Cc: Dave J Woolley; w3c-wai-ig@w3.org
>  > Subject: Re: How to convince businesses to be accessible...
>  >
>  >
>  > I think we need to carefully define accessability.  it is no more just a
>  > question of who need what to access in terms of disability.  it is fast
>  > becoming what will the software and hardware will bear and I am here to
>  > tell you that that will decrease drastically over time.  graphics should
>  > get out of the way of information and lower costs for the connection
>  > mean more buying power for those businesses trying to sell to us.
>  > --
>  > Hands-On Technolog(eye)s
>  > ftp://poehlman.clark.net
>  > http://poehlman.clark.net
>  > mailto:poehlman@clark.net
>  > voice 301-949-7599
>  > end sig.
>  >
>  
>
>-- 
>Charles McCathieNevile    mailto:charles@w3.org    phone: +61 (0) 409 134 136
>W3C Web Accessibility Initiative                      http://www.w3.org/WAI
>Location: I-cubed, 110 Victoria Street, Carlton VIC 3053, Australia
>September - November 2000: 
>W3C INRIA, 2004 Route des Lucioles, BP 93, 06902 Sophia Antipolis Cedex,
France
>
>
Anne L. Pemberton
http://www.pen.k12.va.us/Pav/Academy1
http://www.erols.com/stevepem/Homeschooling
apembert@crosslink.net
Enabling Support Foundation
http://www.enabling.org

Received on Tuesday, 10 October 2000 18:43:05 UTC