Re: Are Accessibility Standards Impeding Progress on the Web?

> It's not uncommon for closed environments (in other words Intranets, and to
> a lesser extent some extranets) to mandate a particular browser with any
> accessibility needs not catered by those browsers being catered something
> running on top of that browser (e.g. everyone uses IE and those who need
> screen-readers use Jaws with IE etc.).

And these sorts of aids are most likely to be paid for by an employer.
Blind users with limited means (and the two tend to correlate) still
quite often use Lynx to access the web.  (Others on limited means may
have to rely on machines that operate a no scripting policy for security
reasons, because they cannot afford a home connection.)

I don't know the proportion of blind Lynx to blind commercial AT users,
but they are certainly still around.  I suspect there may be rather more
blind people who believe that the web is only useable by sighted people.

PS I think that "progress" has often to be considered a "new speak" word.
Advertisers have to make people associate change with progress, otherwise
people might just keep using the perfectly good solutions that they already
have.  I would actually argue that the initial, tru, progress of the web was the
result of deliberately dumbing down the technology, compared with contemporary
versions of PDF, and word processors, etc. (this was an explicit design aim
for T B-L).

Received on Saturday, 24 August 2002 05:48:38 UTC