Re: Is Flickr an Edge Case? (was Re: HTML Action Item 54)

On 5/26/08 5:59 PM, "L. David Baron" <dbaron@dbaron.org> wrote:
> We have to
> consider the costs and benefits of meeting these requirements.  If
> we enforce them on everyone, one thing we'll do is force a lot of
> this content off of the Web entirely, which would make it accessible
> to much fewer people.

By this logic, Flickr, et al., would never have existed in the first place,
since @alt is mandatory today. And yet, last I checked, it does. Standards
are not laws, and you will not be legislating anything out of existence by
leaving @alt mandatory.

Furthermore, I've been around for most of the web's history, and I can't
think of a single case where disability groups have demanded, or asked, or
even intimated, that new web technologies or paradigms _must not be
developed_ before they are fully accessible. That would make this argument a
strawman.

(Note: before bringing up lawsuits like Southwest, Target, the 2000
Olympics, etc. those suits were all seeking technically-feasible
accommodations for users with disabilities; none of them, as far as I know,
ever suggested that the sites should be taken offline since they were
inaccessible.)

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m