RE: CHARACTER_ENCODING_SUPPORT and Accesibility (was Accesibility Review)

Actually, lack of encoding support could make the content harder *or impossible* to understand. This means that all your efforts to be WCAG compliant, with all your quick access to assistance, guidance, explanations and other pointers that your users expect to observe, could be completely undermined. You could leave vulnerable end users with nothing whatsoever, except perhaps a feeling that they (and not you) have done something wrong. Plus, the one site from where they might expect to get help regarding access to your content/service is the one site that is now inaccessible to them. Anyone who has gone to the effort of being WCAG compliant should be concerned about loss of accessibility due to encoding mis-matches.

It's a pity that browsers don't have some out-of-band protocol for assistance that wouldn't rely on encoding/markup/image-format or other ordinary content that is presented in the main window. We've already seen how many browsers now present security status in this way (the padlock icon or the coloured address bar) so why can't some accessibility features be there too. Like a "panic button" when some dumb-*ss gives you encoding your browser can't handle?

Just some thoughts.

---Rotan.

-----Original Message-----
From: public-bpwg-request@w3.org [mailto:public-bpwg-request@w3.org] On Behalf Of Alan Chuter
Sent: 29 November 2007 11:36
To: MWI BPWG Public
Subject: Re: CHARACTER_ENCODING_SUPPORT and Accesibility (was Accesibility Review)

 [CHARACTER_ENCODING_SUPPORT]
> If the content encoding is not supported by the browser the text could
> be renderer with rubbish (it depends on the language) making it harder
> to understand.

If a user has a reading disability then garbled text would be more of
a problem, but is that really a sufficient benefit to motivate
including it in this document? All users will have difficulty reading
garbled text. We are saying "If your content is WCAG compliant, you
may be sufficiently concerned to implement this BP on accessibility
grounds." Maybe we can discuss this on the call today.

Alan



On 28/11/2007, Charles McCathieNevile <chaals@opera.com> wrote:
>
> On Wed, 28 Nov 2007 12:49:07 +0100, Miguel Garcia
> <miguel.garcia@fundacionctic.org> wrote:
>
> > [SCROLLING]
> > Limit scrolling to one direction particularly in the vertical axis, will
> > also help people with cognitive limitations as some won't notice or will
> > be disoriented by the horizontal scroll.
> >
> > [CHARACTER_ENCODING_SUPPORT]
> > If the content encoding is not supported by the browser the text could
> > be renderer with rubbish (it depends on the language) making it harder
> > to understand.
>
> I agree with both of these statements.
>
> cheers
>
> Chaals
>
> --
> Charles McCathieNevile  Opera Software, Standards Group
>      je parle français -- hablo español -- jeg lærer norsk
> http://my.opera.com/chaals              Try the Kestrel - Opera 9.5 alpha
>
>
>


-- 
Email: achuter@technosite.es
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Received on Thursday, 29 November 2007 11:56:09 UTC