Re: User Contexts: identifying assistive technologies

Rich Schwerdtfeger

Jason White <jason@jasonjgw.net> wrote on 06/06/2013 12:20:01 AM:

> From: Jason White <jason@jasonjgw.net>
> To: public-indie-ui@w3.org, 
> Date: 06/06/2013 12:21 AM
> Subject: Re: User Contexts: identifying assistive technologies
> 
> Richard Schwerdtfeger <schwer@us.ibm.com> wrote:
> > There are sites that
> > will turn off access features for performance reason if they are able. 

> 
> Presumably they could turn them off by default and enable them only if 
the
> user's context profile indicates a requirement for captions, 
descriptions or
> anything else indicative of access needs. This can happen entirely in 
the
> absence of any key in the profile that explicitly discloses assistive
> technologies.
> 
> Note that, as previously stated, I have substantial concerns about the 
misuse
> of an assistive-technology-identifying property, but the particular 
misuse
> that you identified above unfortunately could apply as an argument 
against
> most of User Contexts, not just against this specific capability.
> 
I would agree but stating that a user is using a screen reader vs. a zoom 
level (which could be used by anyone) is a concern. Making things as 
abstract as possible, such as requesting something be interoperable with 
an assistive technology (ATInteroperable) would be better. I was at the 
M-Enablement summit in Washington this week where I spoke on a panel about 
mobile and cloud accessibility - specifically context adaptation. I did 
not mention this particular issue but Terry Weaver, the former head of the 
Government Standards Administration (GSA) approached me after the 
presentation and raised possible concerns about providing information to a 
web app that may be used to track people. 

Our goal is of course to promote a better user experience. We just need to 
make sure we have vetted the issues. 

> User-agent strings are exactly the analogy that I had in mind here, 
which I
> think places me in full agreement with Raman on the point. On the other 
hand,
> I don't think the privacy issues are any different from those associated 
with
> other aspects of User Contexts, which implies that I'm in a slight
> disagreement with Andy (his reasons, not his conclusion). 
Interoperability
> considerations and standards-conformance are the decisive issues for me.
> 
I am also in agreement with Raman. I would like to lean more toward 
stating standards conformance (ARIA 1.0, etc.) vs. stating we are running 
a screen reader. However, I do appreciate what James is trying to do. 


> As an aside, the conformance section of WCAG 2.0 is clear: a Web page 
(as
> defined in the spec) conforms if "a conforming alternate version is 
provided".
> Thus it's permissible so far as WCAG is concerned to require users to 
disclose
> a need for accessibility in order for it to be provided, and to serve a 
highly
> inaccessible version by default.

Yes. that was my earlier point stating that I do believe that site 
developers will attempt to provide pages without accessibility features to 
improve performance. However, it would be safer (from a privacy 
perspective) to help them in making that decision by asking them to do it 
based on conformance standards vs. assistive technology types. 
> 

Whatever we do we will be providing information to a site we just need to 
all agree what is an acceptable amount and we should cast a wider net than 
our group. 

>

Received on Friday, 7 June 2013 19:09:47 UTC