Re: accessibility supported questions

Hi Ramon,
just to pick up on this statement

>It seems also that WAI-ARIA is been supported -more or less- by major browsers, but we should take in account the AT support for this technology, that (in my >opinion) is very poor.

For JAWS, Window Eyes, NVDA and Orca at least, support for WAI-ARIA is
good and getting better.

for example: http://live.gnome.org/Orca/Firefox/ARIAWidgets details
ARIA support in Orca

regards
steve faulkner

2009/4/1 Ramón Corominas <listas@ramoncorominas.com>:
> Hello again.
>
>> Thanks for sharing your opinion, but "enough" and "cost" is a policy
>> discussion in my pinion, not a technical software engineering discussion.
>> "Costs" and "enough" is only mentioned WCAG 2.0 (see Note 2) as one of 4
>> choices (2d), but I do agree it should be part of the policy discussion.
>
> So let's see what are the "technical" choices you mention...
>
> "2. The Web content technology must have accessibility-supported user agents
> that are available to users. This means that at least one of the following
> four statements is true:
>  a. The technology is supported natively in widely-distributed user agents
> that are also accessibility supported (such as HTML and CSS);"
>
> This is not -and as far as I know won't be- the case for Adobe PDF and
> Flash, since they require a plug-in or different application. In my opinion
> Adobe Reader itself (not the plug-in) can't be strictly considered as a true
> "user agent", since it does not *retrieve* web content, although I could
> accept Reader as a kind of external add-on to the user agent that renders
> /downloaded/ web content.
>
> It seems also that WAI-ARIA is been supported -more or less- by major
> browsers, but we should take in account the AT support for this technology,
> that (in my opinion) is very poor.
>
> "OR  b. The technology is supported in a widely-distributed plug-in that is
> also accessibility supported;"
>
> (and I think we should implicitly add "and distributed in an accesible
> manner")
>
> This would then be the case for Flash and PDF. As Matt has stated, PDF seems
> to be well-supported in a wide variety of OS, user agents, and AT, so I
> suppose that if content is well-formed, we can safely accept PDF as an
> "accessibility supported" technology; anyway, I think we must still keep in
> mind that most of the users won't have the latest version of the OS, user
> agent or AT, so we will still be excluding people. But yes, technically
> right.
>
> In respect to Flash, I only can say that all "accessible" Flash content that
> I've been able to test only renders ok with some combinations of Windows +
> IE + JAWS, and inserted in a particular way in the HTML. Perhaps its real
> support is better than I can know and all content I've tested is badly done;
> this would be great news for me, so I could then accept Flash as "safe" and
> concentrate efforts in study and develop recommendations to generate good
> content.
>
> It would be nice if Adobe developed official Techniques for Flash and PDF to
> be included in the WCAG documents (perhaps they already exist somewhere?).
>
> My apologizes to Matt if it seemed that I rejected PDF, Flash, or any other
> technology as accessibility supported. It was my fault to mention specific
> technologies, since I'm only copying WCAG when they state that a technology
> must have support to be considered supported (very logical, I think).
>
> "OR c. The content is available in a closed environment, such as a
> university or corporate network, where the user agent required by the
> technology and used by the organization is also accessibility supported;"
>
> Not the case, since we are talking about general content in the World Wide
> Web.
>
> "OR d. The user agent(s) that support the technology are accessibility
> supported and are available for download or purchase in a way that:
>  * does not cost a person with a disability any more than a person without a
> disability and
>  * is as easy to find and obtain for a person with a disability as it is for
> a person without disabilities."
>
> So for widespread web content, any technology (no names here) that is only
> compatible with certain OS, user agent, and/or AT (not widely supported), we
> should not be punished for suffering a disability.
>
> Am I right in my interpretation now? Which technologies will you consider as
> "accessibility supported", then?
>
> Regards,
> Ramón.
>
>
>



-- 
with regards

Steve Faulkner
Technical Director - TPG Europe
Director - Web Accessibility Tools Consortium

www.paciellogroup.com | www.wat-c.org
Web Accessibility Toolbar -
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Received on Wednesday, 1 April 2009 12:25:33 UTC