WCAG Priorities does not help the low vision

Hi,

I see a growing tendency making Web Sites level A Conformance.
These Web Sites claim they are accessible. All WCAG guidelines that can 
improve accessibility for people with some vision loss include a large 
group of elderly people are priority 2 guidelines (contrast between 
background and text colors, relative table measures instead of fixed).
Why is filling the ALT attribute on images more important than relative 
measurement?
I use a screen magnifier and set font size in Internet Explorer to medium. 
A lot of people with vision loss set it to Largest and always use their own 
font.
The result is, that on a lot of pages text and links hide under other 
frames or table columns.
The only way this can be solved is by using the author's settings, but that 
makes it impossible to read.

In the Netherlands we have a project Drempels Weg, that let Web Sites claim 
accessible on Level A Conformance.
Also the European Union pollicy is Level A Comformance. They speak about 37 
million people having problems with accessing the Internet. But solving 
only priority 1 problems does not solve the problems of those 37 million 
people in the EU.
Most priority 1 problems are blind and screen reader related and only helps 
10% of those 37 million.
By defining priorities companies and organizations are no willing to make 
their web site accessible after they are Level A Conformance.

BTW: Personaly I believe that most priority 2 problems could be solved by 
much more flexible web browsers, but there are no such browsers available 
at this moemnt.

Regards Peter Verhoeven
Internet : http://www.magnifiers.org (The Screen Magnifiers Homepage)

Received on Tuesday, 23 April 2002 04:53:14 UTC