Re: Letter in '.net' magazine

From: "Jukka Korpela" <jukka.korpela@tieke.fi>

[WAI and RNIB accessibility initiatives - letter to redress the "hypocrite"
accusation]

> I think the letter would deserve clarifying comments, which
> partly admit the problems pointed out, rather than refutation.

Good idea. Although it seems very hard to draw the line between
clarification and overkill. It may be a better idea to raise a set of points
with URLs to clarifying resources. The biggest problem with accessibility,
and the people involved in accessibility is that we know what the Web really
is, we know its not an inferior version of paper, we know its not a
visually-limited medium, we know desktop browsers aren't the only "window"
to the Web, we know the Web was designed as an accessible medium from the
start -- but somehowm the people we are trying to convince don't have a
solid understanding of the World Wide Web, they just see what the funky web
designer believes, which is largely misleading since the web designer is
only showing them what he thinks they want to see.

There are some fundamental gaps of knowledge of the very people that have
the power to get the accessibility job done. To fill in those gaps with
clarifying comments will lead to a letter that may be better published as a
chapter in a book.

It may be an idea to take a lot of the "strawman arguments" and the
arguments raised because of a misunderstanding or lack of knowledge on the
web and tackle those individually, and independant of accessibility. I'm
exasparated by the lack of knowledge of influential people (or I'm being
trolled really well). Its bashing a brick wall discussing accessibility with
someone who hasn't seen the web as anything but an extension of the print
world, or thinks that browsers that don't react the same way as Internet
Explorer are seen as non-standard.


--
Mike Davies
Senior Web developer

Received on Thursday, 10 October 2002 15:46:12 UTC