- From: David Poehlman <poehlman@clark.net>
- Date: Thu, 18 May 2000 10:34:57 -0400
- CC: uaccess-l@trace.wisc.edu, Bruce Bailey <bbailey@clark.net>, Ana Gutierrez-Scholl <anaden1@alaska.com>, w3c-wai-gl@w3.org
Hello Anne! It's nice to see you back on the list after so long. Please stay here and work with us? For the benefit of some who may not have encountered your issues before and as a result of what seem to be new issues, I will turn this into a dialogue below with my comments interspersed among parts of your message and marked with dp. First though, I must tell you of my sadness that this message is not pictorial. As a blind person, I have some sense of the visual perspective but could not begin to access the material that would make this message useable by all as you suggest. Anne Pemberton wrote: <snipped> > To add to my dismay (which is compounded by the usual > end-of-schoolyear-scambles), a friend who has been a strong advocate of > accessibility for the disabled/blind online for many years, has been > equally frustrated by the reluctance/refusal of blind web page creators to > make their web pages usable by sighted people. dp I hope this is not a trend. I myself am not reluctant nor do I refuse to make pages accessable. You may know however that blind people cannot visualize in the same way as sighted people so they either get help or not necessarily on purpose code their pages in ways that may not be as attractive or pleasing as they might be. I have not seen a "sighted" person complain about the inaccessability of any web pages that I know of that were created by the blind. Of course, I can create black on black in a new york minute and rant in it about all those terrible sighted people who refuse to create pages in such a way as to provide meaningful and accessible layout and content for all? > I remain very sympathetic to > the critics of accessibility who point out that pages that comply aren't > inviting to those who are visually-dependent, visually-oriented, or simply > strong right hemispheric. Even the recent post from Greg V. puts the need > for graphics on page at the beginning of the list of needs for the > cognitively disabled. But it isn't a front-burner issue for the guidelines > that are supposed to be accommodating ALL with disabilities. It is a sad > reality. dp last I looked, the WCAGWG (Web Content Accessability Guidelines Working Group) was rechartering but they've probably finished by now. They are working on what will be 2.0. Perhaps this would be agood time for you and others to join. I fear though that as what you mention below indicates that this is not a content issue in the way that we traditionally view content unless the w3c adds a new device that is coding of alternate images for text content. so, we'll have images and other visual objects with alt text, alternative images for the alternative text and so on? > > As I see it, the issue should be to FIX the equipment used by those who > cannot see graphics, cannot used side-by-side coluns, and cannot read > tables of information properly. It's probably unnecessary to say these > tools were badly designed from the outset, but reality seems to suggest > that the fix belongs there, not in developing endless fixes that reduce > usability of web pages to visual users including those with disabilities > that make them dependent on vision. dp and on the other side of the coin, we have people crying out that their pages should automatically come up talking in whatever browser they are using because of cognative issues. This is in no way suggesting that your concerns are unfounded. In fact, quite the opposite. Many users of assistive technology have more than one functional limitation. For instance, take the case of a person who is cognatively and visually impaired. Yes, they have some vision and can use it but they need things to stand out and also to talk a bit. There are products on the market that achieve this. Also, at developpers are well aware of the issues that are show stoppers for at users and are working hard to correct them. The bottom line though is this. All the wcag seeks to do is to examine the w3c html 4.01 specification and provide methods of implementing it that make information that would be other wise <unavailable> available. Perhaps what we need is assistive technology that turns text into representative images. This should be less difficult than attempting to translate an image into text where there is no text to begin with? > > Well, this note has turned out to be more honest and straightforward than > I had set out to write. I'll temper the flames it generates. dp At first, I was angered by what I read here but decided because of our long association and my regard for the issues you rais to wait a bit. Additionally, as I wrote, I realized that if it hasn't already, something could possibly come out of this discussion that might more strongly address the issues. They say that necessity is the mother of invention and I consider this to be a sexist statement but it is hardly challenged. The current correct wa to make this statement would be to say that necessity is the parent of invention and this is a form of accessability if you will and I agree that just as taking the beauty out of a web site can be done by some who think that to make sites accessable subtraction rather than addition is the rule, the old way is better. There are many solutions and many roads to those solutions but you may know that the gap between the functional requirements of a vision oriented user and by oriented I mean non textual and a user with no vision or hearing completely dependant on text and vibration is quite wide. It is possible though to solve these issues though so we must continue to strive toward that goal. The technology exists right now to solve many of these issues but I'll let others address how that can be done by the creator and the server. Thanks! > > Anne
Received on Thursday, 18 May 2000 10:34:39 UTC