Re: An article about Yahoo's simplicity of design

I thnk there is more than a resource problem here. It is genuinely difficult
to absorb large amounts of information aurally, as anyone who has sat through
an lecture knows. There are people who are very skilled at making it seem
effortless, but for most of us as authors that is a very challenging part of
the task. It is also a very important part.

There are extremely good, free, screen reader solutions available today,
but they will not solve the problem. The bottom line question that Dick asks
is one that primary school teachers, parents, and older siblings ask
themselves many times each day. Intuitively we understand that this can be
done, but the challenge for the working group is to extend that everyday
activity to the way we produce web content, and to understand how to express
it in our guidelines and techniques.

Charles McCN

On Sat, 5 Feb 2000, Jonathan Chetwynd wrote:

  Subject: lack of resources available to people with cognitive difficulties
  
  I think anne has really centred on the problem.
  mostly our students rely on the cast off computers from admin.
  naturally they do not have specialist software, and are a few years old.
  
  jay@peepo.com
  
  Jonathan Chetwynd
  Special needs teacher / web accessibility consultant
  education and outreach working group member, web accessibility initiative,
  W3C
  ----- Original Message -----
  From: Anne Pemberton <apembert@crosslink.net>
  To: Dick Brown <dickb@microsoft.com>; 'Jonathan Chetwynd' <jay@peepo.com>;
  Scott Luebking <phoenixl@netcom.com>; <w3c-wai-gl@w3.org>
  Sent: Saturday, February 05, 2000 12:14 AM
  Subject: RE: An article about Yahoo's simplicity of design
  
  
  > At 05:10 PM 2/3/2000 -0800, Dick Brown wrote:
  > >But I guess my question is more bottom-line: How can site owners (such as
  > the WAI) represent large amounts of text (such as guidelines) so that it
  is
  > accessible to non-readers? How can the many concepts in those guidelines
  be
  > represented in non-text form?
  >
  > Jonathon has made suggestions for this previously. Large amounts of text
  > will pose the same problem as large numbers of graphics. The blind person
  > will lose comprehension of a page of graphics, even if tagged, just as a
  > severely cognitively/reading disabled person will lose comprehension of a
  > page of text even if it is marked with eye-catching fonts in titles and
  > subtitles, and the use of color to mark items of note in the text.
  >
  > >Likewise, what can the online version of the New York Times do to make it
  > possible for non-readers to get all of the day's news? Is it enough that
  an
  > audio summary is available via Audible.com?
  > >
  > Let Jonathon answer definitively for his end of the population, but the
  > folks I've worked with would enjoy an audio summary on something that can
  > be installed free, such as real player.
  >
  > >Do sighted non-readers ever use screen reader software so they can listen
  to
  > >the text on a Web page?
  >
  > The PC's just delivered for my computer lab at a K-2nd grade school do NOT
  > include any screen reader software. Nor have I been given a budget to
  > purchase software even tho this is a change from MAC's to PC's (Actually,
  > the only software tha came with it is Windows NT with Paint, Notepad and
  > Wordpad... if this  were the place to do it, I'd be soliciting software
  > donations!)
  >
  > Anne
  >
  >
  >
  > Anne L. Pemberton
  > http://www.pen.k12.va.us/Pav/Academy1
  > http://www.erols.com/stevepem/Homeschooling
  > apembert@crosslink.net
  > Enabling Support Foundation
  > http://www.enabling.org
  >
  

--
Charles McCathieNevile    mailto:charles@w3.org    phone: +61 (0) 409 134 136
W3C Web Accessibility Initiative                      http://www.w3.org/WAI
21 Mitchell Street, Footscray, VIC 3011,  Australia

Received on Saturday, 5 February 2000 05:44:31 UTC