Re: My TextOnly Filter (text-equiv)

> 1) Separate/Alternative accessible version: I think realistically this is
> the way the go, even though in theory it would be nicer to have just one
> version, with different CSS etc

It's not just "nicer" to have just one version, it's the only method
that scales for the Web.

> but the web and webmasters are just not at that point yet.

Our job is to help them reach that point faster. You're giving up too
soon :-)

> -- I must admit that I don't really understand the
> problem people seem to have with an alternative version: Provided that each
> non-perfectly-accessible page contains <LINK title="Text-only version"
> rel="alternate" href="text_only.html" media="aural, braille, tty"> to the
> alternative accessible page, braille UAs and Lynx could just fetch that one
> instead, transparently for the end-user!

The issue is not the mechanism to find the alternate page, it's the
duplication process involved, which leads to
  - more work for the author (which mean they are likely to drop this part) 
  - likely divergence/out-of-date pages in the alternate site
  - more complex site management (mess of links from alternate pages going
    to graphical pages and the other way around)
  - each new media potentially needs a different alternate version 

Making a page accessibly also involve more work for the author, of
course, but it doesn't carry the other problems and as a bonus, the
end-user ends up controling the presentation.

Text-only links are bad to the extent where they teach people that the
only way to make their site accessible is by doubling their number of
pages.  But they are a viable solution for some people, so they are
addressed in the PA guidelines.

> 2) Interactive vs. automated/batch transforms: I strongly defend fully
> automated tools for TRANSFORMATION, maybe less so for Evaluation. "General
> public webmasters" don't want to spend time looking at details, but they
> might be willing to provide an accessible site if it can be done
> automatically by a tool, with a simple click.

If it can be done automatically, why bother the author/webmaster, we
just need to integrate the tool in the user agent or in some user
proxy.

Received on Friday, 16 October 1998 06:23:00 UTC