Re: Jonathan's Analysis of the WAI Homepage

Well I have to agree with Kynn that most of my concerns are about the
usability of the WAI homepage and site in general.

>Mission
>The W3C's commitment to lead the Web to its full potential includes
promoting a high degree of usability for
>people with disabilities...

This for me gives the game away. We state that we are concerned with
usability, but who has the site been tested on?
It is obvious to me at least that it has been tested on techies.
So at the very best we are saying " look folks a site thats accessible to
techies"
whereas the hype would have you believe we are concerned for all.
Usability means tested, and the WAI site has just not been tested on people
who are starting out.

I'd like to see a home page that had everything, sound, symbols, ASL, real
video, you name it, AND degraded well with cross browser compatibility.

In the meantime I believe the techies will quickly find the deliberate
cheats through to techno heaven and the masses can learn the basics of what
WAI is about both by example and content.

Let me tell you an experience from today.
A very old and dear friend of mine,is a special needs teacher, she has had a
computer about a year.
I spoke to her today on the phone, and she had been trying to show the site
to a mutual friend.
She had my email address in her book jay@peepo.com so she had got as far as
www.jay@peepo.com as a possible site address.

Anyway the fact was she is obviously confused.
These are the bedrock of people trying to find a way of using the web to
share information and enable CD clients. Without doubt in the top 10% of
staff working directly with CD, and of above average intelligence for the
UK.

They desperately need good information, and WAI should be the place to come.

If we need another project fine, I am happy to jump ship, but I believe it
needs to be in the W3C family, and pretty closely related to WAI.



jay@peepo.com

special needs teacher
web accessibility consultant

Received on Monday, 10 April 2000 14:33:54 UTC