- From: William Loughborough <love26@gorge.net>
- Date: Thu, 18 Jun 1998 06:46:20 -0700
- To: "w3c-wai-ig@w3.org" <w3c-wai-ig@w3.org>
Tom McCain: "My first job will be convincing those several hundred
people that accessibility is important but, somehow, that job seems easy
compared to understanding 1) the standards, 2) how to implement them,
and 3) the esoteric language often used on this listserv."
WL:: Hopefully these concerns are being (effectively?) addressed by the
EO (Education & Outreach) Working Group. The first "tangible" output
might be a brochure addressing the "accessibility is important" part.
The more difficult parts you express concern about will be dealt with in
several ways but: "esoteric language" might describe HTML and it is
fairly clear that until authoring tools (the purview of another Working
Group called the AU group) pretty much force guideline compliance, the
authors of web sites will have to deal with such esoterica. As long as
there are programs that pretend to convert word processor or page making
documents into valid, accessible HTML code there is no alternative to
dealing with HTML itself if one cares about accessibility in both the
sense of access to persons with disabilities and the more general
meaning of the term as a main goal of "universal design": what's more
accessible for blind guys is more accessible for all of us (as well as
for "webphones", WebTV, PDAs or even PagerWeb - God help us!).
--
Love.
ACCESSIBILITY IS RIGHT - NOT PRIVILEGE
http://dicomp.pair.com
Received on Thursday, 18 June 1998 09:50:07 UTC