- From: John Foliot <jfoliot@stanford.edu>
- Date: Tue, 23 Jun 2009 17:45:21 -0700 (PDT)
- To: "'Ian Hickson'" <ian@hixie.ch>, "'Shelley Powers'" <shelley.just@gmail.com>
- Cc: <public-html@w3.org>
Ian Hickson wrote:
>
> (The browser vendors are the ultimate gatekeepers, of course, in that
> they
> get to decide what actually gets implemented. It's our role as editors
> to
> make sure we do what they want, otherwise our documents are nothing but
> rather dry science fiction.)
Actually Ian, the end users are the ultimate gatekeepers, because if the
browser, no matter how 'superior' it might be technically, does not
support the end users, then they will not use it. Perhaps we should help
guide the browsers toward what the end users require, instead of passively
sitting back and taking whatever they choose to deliver?
To that end, I and the other 'engineers' (per James; I prefer empath vs.
scientist myself: same discussion, different perspective), we seek to
speak for those end users who fill the edge cases that the HCI process, by
its very nature often excludes (can you say 80/20 rule?) For us, close
enough is never good enough, and we do not and cannot accept that
perspective - for our constituents *are* the 20% (and actually, according
to _data_, just to introduce a third thread in a very busy day) closer to
25%:
In 2004 a study commissioned by Microsoft showed that among adult computer
users in the United States:
* 1 in 4 has a vision difficulty
* 1 in 4 has a dexterity difficulty
* 1 in 5 has a hearing difficulty
The Microsoft Survey also found that 16% of users have a cognitive
difficulty or impairment, and few (3%) have a speech difficulty or
impairment.
(Source: Study Commissioned by Microsoft Corporation and Conducted by
Forrester Research, Inc. -
www.microsoft.com/enable/research/computerusers.aspx)
Just sayin....
Peace y'all
JF
Received on Wednesday, 24 June 2009 00:46:01 UTC