- From: Matt May <mcmay@bestkungfu.com>
- Date: Wed, 28 Sep 2005 07:21:42 -0700
- To: Sofia.Celic@nils.org.au
- CC: public-wcag-teamc@w3.org
Sofia.Celic@nils.org.au wrote: > My response is: > > Yes, good point. How about using part of the WAI's definition of web > accessibility [2] which is: > "Web accessibility means that people with disabilities can use the Web. > More specifically, Web accessibility means that people with disabilities > can perceive, understand, navigate, and interact with the Web, and that > they can contribute to the Web." > > So I'm wondering whether something along the lines of the following may > suffice: > > User: Person with a disability or disabilities perceiving, understanding, > navigating and interacting with the web. > I propose a subset of your definition: User: Person. When used in W3C specs and elsewhere, as far as I'm aware, "user" is a synonym for "human being accessing the Web." Anything that can't be determined as human is a "client," anything that can be determined as non-human is a "robot," and anything operating on a human's behalf is a "user agent." While many in the field of usability dislike the term (see: "user" is a term only applied to drug addicts and people on computers), most people instantly know what a user is. We shouldn't overload that to mention disability for a couple of reasons: first, it overloads the commonly understood definition of "user"; and second, it suggests that the benefits of the document are somehow limited to those who identify or are diagnosed as having a disability, rather than a much larger set of people with different levels of difficulty accessing Web content. - m
Received on Wednesday, 28 September 2005 14:22:10 UTC