- From: Jon Hanna <jon@hackcraft.net>
- Date: Mon, 9 Feb 2004 11:12:02 +0000
- To: "w3c-wai-au@w3.org" <w3c-wai-au@w3.org>
I agree with keeping the definition of "accessible" broad enough to include all users (and all user-agents) irrespective of the reason why they may have difficulties with it. As a craftsman I don't care whether a user is disabled or not, indeed it's none of my business, but I do care about whether they can use what I build. However the case of people with disabilities does go beyond our moral duty as craftsmen and craftswomen to all our users and into the question of social justice. For those business interests that do not have an immediate concern with accessibility (the "uncoverted" so to speak) these two areas within accessibility have different effects; neglecting some users and some user-agents leaves them with a product that sucks, neglecting others can leave them with a lawsuit on their hands (and rightly so). As such I do think it is necessary to include the case of people with disabilities in a definition of accessible content (and accessible tools, and so on) though it may be useful to give other examples to emphasise that the focus is not entirely on that case (the case of search-engine spiders is always a good one for convincing those who are resistant to accessibility work that it may be in their own interests to pay more attention to these concerns). -- Jon Hanna <http://www.hackcraft.net/> *Thought provoking quote goes here*
Received on Monday, 9 February 2004 06:12:35 UTC