Re: Should we adapt WYSIWYG in CSS?

On Fri, Feb 21 2003  Kynn Bartlett wrote:

>Actually there are a number of cases in which it is not the "right" of 
>the web designer to do it "wrong" -- I'm specifically thinking here of
>accessibility concerns, where doing things by a "WYSIWYG
>philosophy" can prevent people with certain disabilities from
>accessing content.

I actually think that the accessibility might be better 
if such an adaption is accepted. 

>For certain types of content there are legal "rights" of the audience
>that outweigh the needs of the designer to place herself and her
>artistic expression/"freedom of speech" at the center of the equation.

Morally, I agree with you. I did try to say that it is "his right" 
(to be able to do it), not that it was "right of him". 
There is a big difference. If you think in that line, why not remove the 
possibility to show pictures? Then you could prevent offensive pictures 
to be shown on internet. Blind people cannot see pictures anyway, 
why allow pictures? Why allow text to be shown, it might be misused?

>For many other types of content there are strong moral reasons for
>being concerned with accessibility rather than just with the desires
>of the creator.

I agreee. I actually think that an adaption for WYSIWYG might make 
the accessibility higher on internet.

1) All those work-around's on internet that harm accessibilty, 
might be unneeded. Many things could be done more intuitively right, 
from an accessibility point of wiew. 

2) If a property can be set on, it can also be set off by the user, 
and thus make the accessibility higher. As things are today, he can not. 

3) Have in sight that amount of webpages out there trying to make 
WYSIWYG pages. You can not forbid that use of the web. 
It is better to let them do it in a way that don't harm accessibility that much.

>There's a danger in reducing all forms of web design to merely
>a masturbatory exercise, whereby the "designer" is able to "express
>herself" but nobody else can get any value from it.  If that's what
>you want, you might as well design for yourself and keep it on
>your computer's hard drive.

Well, actually,  that would not be easy without a web browser 
(html reader) that is supporting it. 

Another point: You don't have to look at every page of the net, do you? 
(We might need a better way of marking the content of webpages, 
to better filter off those we don't want to look at.) 

What you might find wortless, other's might find valuable.
And in this context, it is insignificant how many that finds it valuable. 

An hypotetical example:
If I have written an article on numerology, where some of the pages 
is encrypted by numerologic methods to demonstrate a princip, 
then very few might find those pages interesting and readable. 
It would of course be polite of me on the main page to tell visitors what 
content that is on those pages. 

Gaute Sandvik

Received on Saturday, 22 February 2003 07:12:35 UTC