- From: Scott Luebking <phoenixl@netcom.com>
- Date: Fri, 19 Nov 1999 19:41:57 -0800 (PST)
- To: nir@nirdagan.com, phoenixl@netcom.com, w3c-wai-gl@w3.org
Hi, Nir Actually, the issue of specifying the tailoring can be handled in a number of different ways depending on the application. For example, if the user is accessing a personal portal, when he/she signs up for the portal, there could be an option for blind user customization. In a search form, there could be a button requesting output customized for a blind user. Cookies are another option. Scott > One issue in generating dynamic pages tailored for the user, > is the ability of the server to have useful information on > the user's needs. > > It seems to me that the current state of HTTP doesn't allow > to get enough information regarding needs of disabled people. > > The mechanisms available now to the server are: > 1. The client's "accept" "accept-language" and "accept-charset" request > headers, > 2. The client's "user-agent" request header. > > The accept-language and accept-charset are the most used by > clients and servers, but they have no direct relation to accesibility. > > The "accept" header may be of some use for accessibility, but if the server > wants to serve only different HTML pages, its use is quite restricted. > > The user-agent request header has two problems. One is that using it is not > scalable > from the server's point of view: the server has to study the particular > abilities of > a growing and diversified set of user agents. The second problem is that > even if the server > recognizes the user agent, this is insufficient to tell what the user > needs: I may very well > want a page crowded with images when I am using Lynx as I have configured > an external image viewer. > > Style sheets offer a mechanism to discriminate by "medium". (Either via the > "media" > attribute of the <link> and <style> HTML elements, or internally in the > stylesheet itself) > > However as Scott suggests, sometimes complicated transformations (not > available in CSS > but possibly available in XSLT) that are taken on the server side are > desireable. > > It seems that a possible solution is to have a "user-agent-media" request > HTTP header. > (or "accept-media" ??) As it has a limited set of values it is much more > scalable > than user-agent, and is a more natural way to apply style sheets on the > server side. > > Seems as an idea that fits the current slogan "CSS on the client and XSLT > on the server." > > Regards, > Nir.
Received on Friday, 19 November 1999 22:42:04 UTC