Re: Multi-Channel Section First Draft from Ken

Hi Ken,

The clarification was unnecessary as I understood exactly what you meant 
and I continue to disagree with this position. Your article is not 
"(...) simply stating plainly what already occurs throughout society and 
government already" (which is a sweeping generalisation in itself). It 
is in fact suggesting policy or measures which condone less 
accessibility or "back-door access" for the sake of wider distribution 
and this is, in my humble opinion, not the role of this interest group. 
In addition to comments I have already submitted in my previous emails, 
I respectfully feel that your article, as it is written now, is 
subjective and controversial. This may be suitable material for a blog 
post but not for a document of this nature.

Best regards,


Catherine

-- 
Catherine Roy
Chargée de projets
Communautique
514.948.6644, poste 222
http://www.communautique.qc.ca



Ken Fischer ClickForHelp.com wrote:
> Hi Catherine
> 	I put a clarification in the blog post for you:
>
> It seems some people are misunderstanding this as advocating abandoning
> progress in accessibility.  I assure you this is not the case.  But it is
> simply stating plainly what already occurs throughout society and government
> already.  If you look at multi-lingual issues, not every document in the US
> from governments is immediately available in Chinese, or even Spanish for
> that matter. EVERYONE is better served by as much government information as
> possible being available in some way and that should be the priority.  It is
> imply not possible to make everything avilable in all possible ways but when
> the need arises, on-demand services can supplement  the less broad methods
> of making information available. I hope this clears it up.
>
> 	Hope this helps. 
> 		Ken
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: public-egov-ig-request@w3.org [mailto:public-egov-ig-request@w3.org]
> On Behalf Of Catherine Roy
> Sent: Wednesday, April 15, 2009 4:10 PM
> To: Ken Fischer ClickForHelp.com
> Cc: 'eGovIG'
> Subject: Re: Multi-Channel Section First Draft from Ken
>
> Hi Ken,
>
> I am more comfortable with your proposal with regards to replacing 
> "accessibility" with "availability" though I still think what y'all are 
> talking about is access. I also think that the digital divide 
> encompasses more issues than "device", connectivity and accessibility 
> (such as gender issues, affordability, culture, etc., as evidenced most 
> notably by the enormous work done in the scope of WSIS) but I understand 
> that you are probably trying to address specific factors.
>
> However, I must say that I am most uncomfortable with the idea of 
> limited accessibility for the sake of prioritizing greater availability 
> or distribution (such as giving examples of library books and making the 
> analogy with on demand access to closed captioning). As it stands now 
> and as the field of accessibility evolves, I think that these sort of 
> statements could go against policies in certain areas with regards to 
> accessibility of online content and could even be, in certain cases, 
> percieved as discriminatory. Perhaps I misread your article and if so, I 
> apologise but in short, I feel that this document should not make 
> proposals that could be interpreted as suggesting specific policy which 
> could result in limiting access for certain types of populations.
>
> Best regards,
>
>
> Catherine
>
>

Received on Saturday, 18 April 2009 19:51:45 UTC