RE: a public perception pitfall to avoid

Anne,

Could you suggest some guidelines wording that might address this?

Gregg

-- ------------------------------
Gregg C Vanderheiden Ph.D.
Professor - Human Factors
Dept of Ind. Engr. - U of Wis.
Director - Trace R & D Center
Gv@trace.wisc.edu, http://trace.wisc.edu/
FAX 608/262-8848
For a list of our listserves send "lists" to listproc@trace.wisc.edu


-----Original Message-----
From:	w3c-wai-gl-request@w3.org [mailto:w3c-wai-gl-request@w3.org] On Behalf
Of Al Gilman
Sent:	Thursday, August 27, 1998 8:01 AM
To:	w3c-wai-gl@w3.org; w3c-wai-eo.org@access2.digex.net
Subject:	a public perception pitfall to avoid

----- Forwarded message from Anne Pemberton -----

>From owner-webwatch-l@teleport.com  Thu Aug 27 08:42:08 1998
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Date: Thu, 27 Aug 1998 08:40:46 -0400
To: webwatch-l@teleport.com
From: Anne Pemberton <apembert@crosslink.net>
Subject: RE: webwatch-l Re: Web Page Accessibility (fwd)
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David, I read with interest your response to Judith. I have a problem with
one of your remarks:

At 04:37 PM 8/26/1998 -0400, David wrote:
>onloy detect errors that do not require human judgement. More often than
not
>these are related to visual impairments, but these can be applicable to
>other  disabilities, like LD. The thing Bobby checks for are based on the
>working draft of the Page Author Guidelines developed by the Web Access
>Initiative (http://www.w3.org/WAI/)

The number of LD people who are aided by hearing the text of the web read
to them exclusive of any graphical content is a very small percentage of
the LD population - and even in this tiny percentage, the graphics are
important to context. These people, more than others, NEED the graphics to
explain the content of the text, and yet comments like above give the
impression that LD folks can be accomodated by avoiding or ommitting the
graphics. This isn't the case.

I've read the working draft of the Guidelines and found no mention
whatsoever of accomodations for those who depend on graphics to interpret
text... The guidelines give a false sense of accomodations by focusing on
avoiding graphics and other page organizers (like frames). I got the sense
from reading the guidelines that a page of text unrelieved with graphics
would be considered "accomdating" when in fact it isn't to many/most LD
folks, mentally challenged folks, and poor readers.

This is a fairly new topic for me, brought about by observing the
difficulties of the LD folks I know and love to access information from the
web. I was told recently, that LD's don't "deserve" accomodations, because
they aren't/haven't worked for them as much as the visually impaired have.
I sincerely hope that that was a gratuitous remark that doesn't reflect the
the feelings of everyone else involved in accomodations.

					Anne





Anne L. Pemberton
http://www.erols.com/stevepem
Curator, Academy One on Virginia's PEN
http://www.pen.k12.va.us/Anthology/Pav/Academy1
Associate, Technology Plus
http://www.erols.com/technology.plus
apembert@crosslink.net

----- End of forwarded message from Anne Pemberton -----

Received on Monday, 31 August 1998 00:01:23 UTC