Re: A proposal for changing the guidelines

I do not agree that there is any demonstrable difference for a user, whether
the page was generated dynaimcally or hand-created by manually resetting bits
of memory. I therefore think this is an inappropriate split.

Where there are multiple versions of a page available there is a difference.
The current guidelines require that at least one version of each page meet
the guidelines entirely, and conformance is based on the conformance of the
single version. Is there a case for having conformance based on the
cumulative conformance to checkpoints of several versions? 

Personally, I feel theere is not, since requiring a user to choose several
pages in order to get the different types of content that they require is not
helpful, and in some cases is on its own going to render content
inaccessible. (Scott's example of telling someone to learn CSS and write a
stylesheet as a method of access is a similar barrier.)

There may be value in a "user impact matrix" - which allows designers who are
not going to meet a conformance level to provide accessibility for a
particular targetted group. However this implies making a bunch of
generalisations about particular groups, and seems an exercise fraught with
difficulty for a dubious return (the risk is that people will simply target
people who are blind, or mobility impaired, or some other single group, and
then claim they are doing all that is feasible for accessibility).

Charles McCN



On Fri, 10 Mar 2000, Scott Luebking wrote:

  Hi,
  
  I'd like to propose that guidelines be modified to allow web page
  developers who are using technology to create web pages dynamically to
  take better advantage of the opportunities offered by this technology.
  
  I'm not quite sure what the best structure would be, but the general
  direction would be something along the lines of creating two main groupings
  of guidelines.  If a user cannot choose the format of the page being
  presented, there would be one grouping of guidelines for that page.  If
  a user can choose in what format a web page would be presented and have
  the information be the same in each format, there would be a different
  grouping of guidelines for that page.
  
  The "single page format" grouping of guidelines would be pretty much the
  same as the current guidelines.  (In this case, the universal design is
  being provided by a single web page format which is appropriately
  designed.)
  
  The "multiple page format" grouping of guidelines would have some of the
  same guidelines as are in the "single page format" but would provide
  more flexibility in addressing accessibility.  (In this case, the
  uiversal design is being provided by the collection of formats for a web
  page instead of a single format.)
  
  A reason I'm thinking of two different groupings is that I think it will
  be easier for developers to follow rather than trying to identify for
  each guideline whether it applies to the single format pages,
  the multiple format pages or to both types of pages.
  
  Scott
  

--
Charles McCathieNevile    mailto:charles@w3.org    phone: +61 (0) 409 134 136
W3C Web Accessibility Initiative                      http://www.w3.org/WAI
Location: I-cubed, 110 Victoria Street, Carlton VIC 3053
Postal: GPO Box 2476V, Melbourne 3001,  Australia

Received on Saturday, 11 March 2000 05:48:07 UTC