Re: Intranet pages

Ian Hickson wrote:
> On Wed, 5 Aug 2009, Steven Faulkner wrote:
>>>> so to exclude these environments from consideration in the 
>>>> development of html, is to exclude an important aspect of the 
>>>> provision of access to users with disabilities.
>>> HTML does not have an exclusive option on the provision of 
>>> accessibility features, or any other features. The whole point here is 
>>> that in a walled garden environment, features (such as accessibility 
>>> features) can be specified, implemented, and deployed without broad 
>>> community agreement.
>> i am not clear on what you are saying here.
> 
> I'm saying that ignoring intranets in designing open Web specs doesn't 
> lead to poor accessibility in intranets, since they don't have to use open 
> Web technologies.

Actually, that's not entirely true.  Just because they don't have to 
doesn't mean they shouldn't.  There are very good reasons for intranets 
to use open web technologies, largely because of all the problems 
associated with relying solely on proprietary technologies.

Within the last few years, many organisations relying on proprietary 
extensions in IE, like ActiveX, have learned the hard way that the 
vendor lock-in situation created by doing so can prevent them from 
easily switching to alternative browsers.  I've personally worked in 
environments in the past where IE was required to use internal intranet 
systems, and I know first hand how bad some of them can be.

This in turn makes it difficult for alternative browsers to penetrate 
the market, since many users like to be able to use the same browser for 
both intranet and internet browsing, at least at work.

So we can't ignore intranet use cases entirely.  However, it's certainly 
not a one sided issue.  Developers of Intranet systems also need to work 
harder to work with open standards and support multiple browsers, but 
that would be easier to do if we don't ignore them.

-- 
Lachlan Hunt - Opera Software
http://lachy.id.au/
http://www.opera.com/

Received on Wednesday, 5 August 2009 11:09:47 UTC