Re: Some questions from CHI-WEB people

On Monday 24 December 2001 16:33, David Poehlman wrote:
|   but if we've gotten past all the learning, how much extra effort is
|   required if all the players are on the same team in that the goal is
|   accessible and attractive?
|

Sorry David I don't understand you here.
Do you mean that all personal is already trained on XHTML, CSS, XML, 
JavaScript, and what extra cost will be to get Web Accessibility?
In this case, *extra* cost will be not high.
But ground basis (*starting cost*) will be enermous!
-> so, final cost wil be very high as well. And that's what Scott was 
interedted in, I suppose.

How many people from this list you have seen on www-style, www-dom or 
www-html lists?
I can tell that I have seen only one person posting here on other lists... 
[excluding me, of course.]
Do you think most people on this list are already familiar with those topics?
Basically, probably, yes. But if you take real knowledge,say, of CSS - just a 
few people understand all complexity and power of CSS.
And this, by the way, explains why it took Microsoft around 6 years to get 
CSS1 compliance. And most likely they wil not get CSS2 support innearest 3 
years. :-((
The fact that Project Manager understands CSS completely (100%) doesn't 
necessary mean that regular programmers (coders) understand all tricks of 
CSS, and therfor they implements *something* in a wrong way. And they can fix 
it only step by step, release by release. And it took them around 6 years to 
implement just *one* specification.
So, what you will expect from *normal* (not *genius*) web designer or 
software developer? I guess normal man (or woman) just gets lost after 
reading 2nd or 3rd W3C Specification or Recommendation.
Making site accessible is great, but so far neither AOL/Netscape/Time Warner 
nor Microsoft/MSN made their sites accessible (or at least validated with W3C 
Validator, and with valid CSS)
It's nice when some small, talented web developers can do validated code (and 
accessible site), but you won't have radical changes in web serfing (and 
support for people with disabilities) until even major companies, members of 
W3C consortium ignore W3C Standards and Recommendations.


|   ----- Original Message -----
|   From: "Vadim Plessky" <lucy-ples@mtu-net.ru>
|   To: "Scott Luebking" <phoenixl@sonic.net>; <w3c-wai-ig@w3.org>
|   Sent: Monday, December 24, 2001 1:24 PM
|   Subject: Re: Some questions from CHI-WEB people
|
[...]
|
|   Hello Scott!
|
|   Separating "content" from "presentation" (which is necessary for web
|   accessibility) requires *web page creater who starts with no background
|   in
|   accessibility guidelines* to learn (at least):
|   * XHTML
|   * CSS
|   both of these tasks are rather complicated, and require *re-thinking* of
|   traditionally used methods (for example, re-design of "copy-and-paste"
|   process, and other important points raised by David Woolley in answer to
|   your
|   mail)
|   Making content in XHTML (or XML) is more close to programming, while
|   (broken)
|   HTML4 can be coded with no knowledge of programming.
|   Knowledge of CSS requires understanding of design principles, and basic
|   knowledge of DTP (Desktop Publishing)
|   If you combine both requirements (programming+DTP) in one, you will
|   understand that it's quite difficult to find a person who can do both.
|   And such person will definitly cost you a lot of money.
|
|   One more point is with making site accessible without SCRIPTs.
|   As many designs (Macromedia Dreamweaver, for example) rely on scripts
|   from
|   the beginning (findOBJ, rollover images, etc.), redesigning site for
|   accessibility will require ... just making completely new site, no
|   less!..
|   Of course, costs associated with this are enermous, and I hardly imagine
|   any
|   company which would like to do this at their own good will.
|
|   I still think that it worth to make site accessible. Let's say that it
|   will
|   take your designer/programmer (with good skills *in general*) one month
|   to
|   learn XHTML/XML and 2 months for CSS. Than I guess one extra month for
|   accessibility looks like reasonable for me.
|   But you can'tr expect *all this done* in one month, for sure.
|
|   Hope that I have answered your question.
|

-- 

Vadim Plessky
http://kde2.newmail.ru  (English)
33 Window Decorations and 6 Widget Styles for KDE
http://kde2.newmail.ru/kde_themes.html
KDE mini-Themes
http://kde2.newmail.ru/themes/

Received on Monday, 24 December 2001 15:10:18 UTC