Re: HDP: Revised "Support Existing Content" Principle

aloha, maciej!

thanks for your work in updating the HDP draft; there is, however,
one point i did want to raise, however, which i didn't hear
explicitly addressed in your post or the draft -- i still think 
the "support existing content" principle needs verbiage, to the 
effect that:

   "Browsers should retain support for residual/legacy markup 
   designed for a specific purpose, such as accessibility.
   internationalization or device independence. Simply because 
   new technologies and superior mechanisms have been identified, 
   not all of them have been implemented. Moreover, disabled 
   users are more likely to be users of "legacy technology" 
   because it is the only technology that interacts correctly 
   with third-party assistive technologies."

or words to that effect...  the point is, "mainstream" ATs are 
dependent upon support for newer technologies as they are adapted
by "mainstream" UAs -- and as the bugs are worked out of both 
applications (the UA and the supporting AT) and successfully 
integrated into "mainstream" ATs after a relatively long period 
of time after they are widely supported by renderers...  the 
NVDA/FireFox and FireVox models, as well as Orca and emacspeak 
on unix/linux boxes, will be early adapters, which is a great 
advance in the developmental cycle, but one which, unfortunately,
is far from reaching a critical mass...

gregory.
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CONSERVATIVE, n.  A statesman who is enamored of existing evils,
as distinguished from the Liberal, who wishes to replace them 
with others.         -- Ambrose Bierce, _The Devil's Dictionary_
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             Gregory J. Rosmaita, oedipus@hicom.net
  Camera Obscura: http://www.hicom.net/~oedipus/index.html
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Received on Friday, 14 September 2007 01:05:36 UTC