- From: William Loughborough <love26@gorge.net>
- Date: Wed, 04 Aug 1999 06:41:14 -0700
- To: jonathan chetwynd <jay@peepo.com>
- CC: Chris Maden <crism@oreilly.com>, w3c-wai-gl@w3.org
JC:: "It is a fact that images are more accessible than words to non readers." WL: I hate to keep quibbling about this but *WORDS* are not the same thing as their representation in text *OR* images. Further, textual versions of words are themselves images. The graphical images we keep trying to talk about are slippery as to what words they are supposed to signify, more so than the (simpler?) images called "text." The URL Jonathan gives is of course not the version of the WAI page that I devised and of which he speaks. The experimental draft version I made is on one of my hosted sites and if anyone is interested email me privately and I'll point you to it. It is definitely not to be confused with any official version and should not be made public. It is merely an attempt to begin examining some of the issues that Jonathan, Anne and others have raised: we must attend more closely to the large portion of potential Web users who have different comprehension needs than the other PWDs we are trying to serve. The continued exclusion of learning/cognitive disabled folks is simply not acceptable. We cannot blindly (pun intended) accept the fashions dictated by authorities in the "research establishment" in these matters but must seek input from the affected population. To blow my own horn, this matter is addressed in the talk I gave at Toronto: http://dicomp.pair.com/talk.htm - the pertinent quote is "the most significant thing that I learned in all that is that you must listen carefully to your friends/clients and even if it's your show, have the mind set that they are in charge." The Working Groups of WAI have input that is heeded from some PWDs but the people spoken of herein have as their *ONLY* input, some stuff from people who work as their "teachers", mostly Jonathan, Anne, and Chuck. This is something we must undertake because we have so much to learn from people who have not been burdened by reading all their lives - a problem from which all the rest of us suffer: "how do you know that?" - "I read it somewhere"!!! -- Love. ACCESSIBILITY IS RIGHT - NOT PRIVILEGE http://dicomp.pair.com
Received on Wednesday, 4 August 1999 09:41:15 UTC