Re: follow up on myth of meeting guidelines & not getting accessibility myth

Hi Group,

I am not sure that meeting WCAG 1.0 
Level AA ensures being truly 
accessible to partially sighted users. 
 There are several accommodations that 
are not listed in the guidelines: 
Reflowing Enlargement ( Enlargement 
that never requires horizontal 
scrolling), element level enlargement 
(Enlargement that can vary with the 
element as needed to conserve screen 
space),  color control (User choice of 
print and background colors in all 
viewing contexts), spacing (text, word 
and line), font family, readable 
single column mode, voice and print 
synchronization when using a screen 
reader.

Every partially sighted person may not 
need all of these accommodations for 
every document, but every partially 
sighted individual needs one or  more 
of these accommodations in order to 
perceive web renderings without 
experiencing serious physical 
discomfort.

The problem of reading for many 
partially sighted people is not 
perception as some level, but 
achieving perception without 
experiencing serious physical 
discomfort such as pain and / or 
nausea.

In all honesty, I have never read a 
site that claims Level AA conformance 
and validates against HTML 4.01 Strict 
or XHTML 1.0 Strict that does not 
support these features using an 
appropriate assistive technology.

Testing against JAWS will not address 
most of these issues.  Also, screen 
magnification does not really address 
the intelligence requirements of 
document text enlargement.  However, 
in WCAG 1.0, screen magnification is 
generally cited as the sight oriented 
accommodation for partial sight.

Has anyone else experienced this, or 
an I just wallowing in self pity.

Wayne

Wayne Dick PhD
Chair Computer Engineering and 
Computer Science
Director WebAdapt2Me Project at CSULB

Received on Tuesday, 2 May 2006 21:59:14 UTC