Re: Ability taxonomy bh

Gregg wrote:
> I would suggest we work from either a functional viewpoint or from a 
> preferences viewpoint and not from a disability etiology.
> 
> That is that the client say
> 
> "cannot view graphics"
> or
> "prefer that you send text only"
> or
> "prefer that you send
> - text only
> - or voice enabled applets
> 
> 
> and not that the client send
> "blind" or "low vision"

I agree with Gregg, to the extend that if we ever get to extent HTTP
to have the client send info to the server (we need to look at what
HTTP already handle, e.g, instead of "cannot view graphics", the
client just doesn't ask for them, or things like regular content-type
negociation), we will have to work at the functional level.

> the former has much more application beyond disability - and will extend to 
> hand held and nomadic devices.
> 
> The latter doesn't really help much anyway since people who are blind can 
> have very different skills and different browser / reader capabilities.

The latter also involves some privacy matters.

Al wrote:
> I think that we should make "the taxonomy of abilities and
> special needs" that these message attributes employ a development
> item, and that we should try to rope the doctors mentioned below
> into this task.  Paul has contributed on this point on the
> dev-access mailing list.

but for our own education/requirement process, I agree with Al that it
would be useful to have such a taxonomy document. So I'd like to see
someone volunteer to drive that effort.

Received on Tuesday, 27 May 1997 05:19:30 UTC