Re: Seeing the open issues

Personally speaking, I don't care whether Ian's "tool"
at http://www.whatwg.org/issues/top/ can be rendered
in IE7 or any other browser.  Any tool/discussion/forum/list
that this group is encouraged to use as a formal part
of its activities should be hosted by W3.Org and should
appear under their aegis, not that of the WHAT WG with
which very few of us are associated in any way.

Philip TAYLOR
--------
Ian Hickson wrote:
> On Tue, 21 Aug 2007, Steve Faulkner wrote:
>> In your off (HTML WG) list response
>> [http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/www-archive/2007Aug/0024.html
>> ]
>> you have offered to help make a second "accessible" version of
>> http://www.whatwg.org/issues/
>>
>> This is I believe is misguided and somewhat disingenuous:
>>
>> "[09:51] <Hixie> and frankly, i don't care if it doesn't work in IE7
>> [09:51] <Hixie> that's IE7's prblem
>> ...
>> [09:53] <Lachy> just that IE users are complaining
>> [09:53] <Hixie> that's their problem
>> [09:53] <Hixie> they need a better browser"
>>
>> cite: http://krijnhoetmer.nl/irc-logs/whatwg/20070821
> 
> Note that I wrote the above comments regarding IE7 before realising that 
> your needs were based on limitations of your accessibility tool rather 
> than on limitations of IE.
> 
> 
>> If it is technically feasible as you infer (in your email) to provide a 
>> version of the page that can be displayed in IE why not provide it in 
>> the first place rather than having to duplicate the effort in developing 
>> a second version? Providing an "accessible" alternative is always a last 
>> resort.
> 
> I have limited resources, I'd like to concentrate on working on the spec 
> rather than working on tools to help people see how I'm working on the 
> spec. I wrote this tool over a weekend, mostly for fun, to help people see 
> what the issues are. It doesn't work in IE because it uses standards-based 
> features that IE doesn't support. However, I have provided full 
> documentation of the API used to allow it to be implemented in other 
> browsers by anyone who wants to do so. I encourage you to implement an IE 
> version, or find someone to volunteer to implement one for you.
> 
> 
>> Often times arguments on the HTML WG mailing list are based on concepts 
>> such as "real world" use cases. IE is a mainstream browser used by many 
>> people.
>>
>> Another concept is that "accessibility should be built in". Reasonable 
>> efforts should be made to ensure that content for the consumption of the 
>> working group members is designed to be displayed without users having 
>> to jump through hoops in order to be able to access it.
> 
> I went out of my way to make sure that the tool was written with 
> accessibility in mind, such that any compliant aural browser or any screen 
> reader with a compliant browser would be more than able to work well with 
> this tool; and I provided detailed documentation to help someone with a 
> non-compliant tool to write their own version. I'm sorry that your 
> browsers are so expensive yet so limited, really I am.
> 

Received on Tuesday, 21 August 2007 17:11:02 UTC