Web Accessibility Initiative

Dear Sirs/Madams,

I greatly applaud the work that is being done in this group. I see that
it is greatly needed in order to make the web truly accessible globally.

In having built a somewhat scalable UI (where the presentation is
optimized according to the user's capabilities) for www.ibm.com, I am
more aware of the needs that we need to meet. We currently customize the
UI automatically according to the browser's capability. However, I was
wondering what thoughts have gone into the effects that XML could have
on accessibility? I can forsee us using this not only for the data
management benefits, but for improving accessibility. With the IBM
website using structured content, the user could use many tools to
navigate the information. If web browsers could allow the user to choose
navigating the site in it's default presentation or via a more stripped
down fashion, it would give the authors greater flexibility to present a
"high-end" format that they would encourage people to use.

It will be very difficult to have authors adopt a manner of developing
websites that will add a lot of extra labor and decrease the marketing
impact of the presentation (being involved in this side of the industry,
I have seen how market segmentation allows companies to isolate a
perceptively small audience and not address their needs when they see
great response from a larger audience). However, XML's ability to
separate the data/structure from the presentation allows an author to
build a website that inherently is navigable to a full audience. This,
of course, goes on the assumption that good XML browsers are created to
facilitate accessibility.



--

John Grotting
Creative Director
furrylogic@studioarchetype.com

Studio Archetype
55 Broad St. 29th Floor
New York, NY 10004
ph. (212) 299-4021
fax (212) 299-4034
http://www.studioarchetype.com

Design et conception des sites Web

Received on Thursday, 18 June 1998 20:21:04 UTC