- From: Jason White <jasonw@ariel.ucs.unimelb.edu.au>
- Date: Tue, 30 May 2000 09:57:16 +1000 (EST)
- To: Web Content Accessibility Guidelines <w3c-wai-gl@w3.org>
The concept of undue hardship is relevant in the courtroom (or in a tribunal hearing), but not in the guidelines. I agree with an earlier observation from Charles that we do need to establish the minimal requirements that can be expected of a user agent for purposes of the guidelines, and these are likely to be rather limited. XHTML Basic, now available as a public working draft, provides interesting insight into what are thought to be the minimal capabilities of user agents, including emerging mobile devices, and can obviously serve as a starting point for further discussion. Of course, there are many reasons why client-side scripts are either inaccessible, or unavailable to identifiable groups of users; and these are reflected in the guidelines. Whether the requirement to provide alternatives to such technology would create "unjustifiable hardship" is relevant in the context of anti-discrimination law, but not in determining what users' needs are with respect to the design of accessible web content, the latter being the task of the guidelines. Disclaimer: the foregoing is a personal opinion only.
Received on Monday, 29 May 2000 19:58:13 UTC