Re: Path to Last Call (was closing various issues)

On 24/08/2009 18:53, William Loughborough wrote:
 > What I am "trying to say" is that accessibility MUST be a fundamental
 > concern for design and that in fact, the notion of isolating
 > accessibility from other mandatory concerns in design is intolerable.

Sorry, William, but I can't understand the nature of your disagreement 
with Steven's post.

Do you agree that the following two claims about web author psychology 
are true?

    1. Web authors have various goals.
    2. Web authors often treat other goals as more important that 
accessibility.

If yes, do you agree that the following prediction based on those claims 
is reliable?

    3. All other things being equal, more web content will be accessible 
if actions required to meet those other goals intrinsically produce 
accessible content than if additional actions are required to make the 
content accessible.

Your emails seem to make the ethical claim that:

    4. Web authors are obligated to treat accessibility as an essential 
goal.

Do you think this ethical claim changes the truth of the first two 
claims or the reliability of the prediction?

Let's say there is language feature, there are two options to allow 
authors to make content using that feature accessible, and the options 
are equal in all respects except that one option requires additional 
author action and the other option requires no author action. In that 
scenario, which of the following should the web specification designers 
do and why:

    (a) Pick a random option.
    (b) Pick the option that involves extra author action.
    (c) Pick the option that involves no extra author action.

It seems Steven is effectively saying they should pick the option that 
involves no extra action, because he accepts the prediction that this 
will lead to more content being accessible.

--
Benjamin Hawkes-Lewis

Received on Monday, 24 August 2009 20:21:45 UTC