Re: Terminology

I think this is a major mistake, for thesame reason a text-only page is a
mistake.

Although there are a number of web users out there with no faciilty whatever
to view graphically represented information, there are a larger number whose
facility to do so is simply different from the assumptions made by some web
content providers.

To simply throw away the graphics and suggest that it is now an accessible
site is like turning the volume off and saying now this site is fine for deaf
people. Consider the following cases:

A person with poor vision magnifying the page by perhaps 8 times. There is no
intrinsic reason why this person should not see the "graphical
version". However, to provide a poorly designed graphic version which does
not magnify cleanly, and a non-graphic version is to effectively to offer
such a person two unworkable choices.

A person who is congenitally deaf, uses a sign language, and is a poor
reader. To provide this person with an uncaptioned movie presentation or with
the collated text transcript is generally a bad solution.

In fact the problem is not really one of terminology, but one of what is
required to be able to use a page. In general terms one could sum it up as
access to the content of the page, but in a case where a person has a
limitation (whether a disability or other environmental constraint is
irrelevant) in the media they can use, then it is to provide sufficient
alternatives that they can come as close as practicable to the original
goal. The approach of providing a version for only two groups of users (blind
users and people with a certain hardware/software combination that has been
presumed to be a "standard") is much better than only proviing for one group
of users, but is still a very serious shortfall. A better approach is to
provide the relevant information and alternatives from which a user can take
as much as they can use.

It is for this reason that the current guidelines do not recommend an
alternative version, and that many members of the working group are opposed
to promoting such a solution. Perhaps better terminology would be an
accessible version and an inaccessible version (I would use stronger language
but there is only rhetorical value anyway). The situation in which I
recommend such a strategy is where there is some constraint which means that
an inaccessible version is going to be produced. An example would be an
organisation which produced forms that were legally required to have a
certain format, and the only possible exemption was to provide the forms in
accessible format specifically for people with disabilities. I remain opposed
to this strategy as anything but a last resort.

Charles McCN


On Thu, 16 Dec 1999, Scott Luebking wrote:

  Hi,
  This afternoon a blind friend and I discussed possible terminology.
  The idea we came up with was "non-graphic" personal web pages.
  It is probably preferable to "text-only" since it is possible to
  have a web page of text, but have the layout have a graphic feel
  to it, e.g. text in double columns.  Blind users might have slightly higher
  recognition of the phrase "non-graphic".  Also, browsers seem to be
  categorized as graphic and non-graphic.
  
  The draw-back is that people are somewhat used to the phrase "text-only".
  
  What do people think?
  
  Scott
  

--
Charles McCathieNevile    mailto:charles@w3.org    phone: +61 409 134 136
W3C Web Accessibility Initiative                    http://www.w3.org/WAI
21 Mitchell Street, Footscray, VIC 3011,  Australia (I've moved!)

Received on Sunday, 19 December 1999 09:25:50 UTC