- From: Charles McCathieNevile <charles@w3.org>
- Date: Sat, 14 Oct 2000 08:35:23 -0400 (EDT)
- To: Julie Howell <JHOWELL@rnib.org.uk>
- cc: w3c-wai-eo@w3.org
Retrofitting for a specific purpose may not take a lot of time. But the
value in designing properly from the start is that it avoids having 50 or 100
requests for specific purpose retrofitting, and avoids the delays,
frustrations, and customers just giving up that motivated those requests in
the first place.
By the way I think this is more particularly relevant to the development of a
business case for accessibility.
Cheers
Charles McCN
On Fri, 13 Oct 2000, Julie Howell wrote:
William wrote:
> From 20,000 feet I would urge that a couple of points be made
in any/all(?) training sessions...retrofitting is beyond being a
nuisance;
Sometimes I find I need to put a different spin on retrofitting.
For example. A blind person approaches me because they
can't use a particular site. I approach the designer who is
sympathetic, but tells me that their new design isn't scheduled
for a further 18 months, at which time the site will be made
accessible. My customer doesn't have 18 months to wait
around - so I ask the designers to do a bit of short-term
retrofitting.
To persuade him/her to do this, I need to make
retrofitting seem straight-forward and achievable ("honestly, this
will only take you 10 minutes", etc.), while at the same time
saying 'of course, if you do this right from the start...'.
Somehow, I think we need to train designers to understand the
benefits of universal design from the outset, while still seeing the
worth in retrofitting as a short-term solution.
Julie, RNIB, UK
--
Charles McCathieNevile mailto:charles@w3.org phone: +61 (0) 409 134 136
W3C Web Accessibility Initiative http://www.w3.org/WAI
Location: I-cubed, 110 Victoria Street, Carlton VIC 3053, Australia
September - November 2000:
W3C INRIA, 2004 Route des Lucioles, BP 93, 06902 Sophia Antipolis Cedex, France
Received on Saturday, 14 October 2000 08:35:25 UTC