Re: A proposal for changing the guidelines

while i agree with scott, we cannot dictate the technical approach as long
as the user is covered.  with personalization and content management, you
could visit a site and select all content be delivered to you in a
particular format.  Universal Design is a good concept, but hi-end marketing
requires personalization and your ad revenue and catalog sales are what keep
you a float.  Therefore, I can use a database to push the content that you
desire.  Many sights already do this and you may or may not be aware.  A
most excellent tool is Vignette Story server.  The objective is to turn hits
into revenue and database driven web sites support this.  they also support
ease of use with content maangement tools.  Remember, the commercial market
and print newspapers and magazines are going to be the toughest to convince.

i also must caution the use of database driven web sites if they are going
to see a lot of useage.  this is an operations issue and would hope that the
operation folks are up to speed on caching and scalability and running a
hi-end site.  Depending on the operating system, middleware and dataabse, a
methodology could be used to generate the page and cache it so it does not
get hit.

One thing that bothers me with validators, bobby and other tools is they
always tell you when you need <noScript>, but they do not take into account
if the user has turned javascript off on the client side then the server
side validation kicks in and the information is processed.

there is so much testing to be done to rally quantufy how each tool and
browser work with agents.  all this in the time to market that uses internet
time.

i do not think the WCAG guidelines have deifned their target audience.  Is
it PWD or developers - it should be both!  They have a simbiotic
relationship, yet each have different subgroups.  Hence different
requriements and needs.  Universal Design is supposed to be a cure all, but
when?  three years?  thisnk we need to putn the marketing caps on and use
the soft sale appraoch...hook the developers with a nibbel and then when
authpring tools are on board, then use the net!

see y'all next monday in los angelos.

rob


----- Original Message -----
From: Scott Luebking <phoenixl@netcom.com>
To: <charles@w3.org>; <phoenixl@netcom.com>
Cc: <w3c-wai-gl@w3.org>
Sent: Sunday, March 12, 2000 8:27 PM
Subject: Re: A proposal for changing the guidelines


> Hi, Charles
>
> I'm not sure you're understanding my point.  The difference is that when
> a web page is generated dynamically, it can be created to more
> accurately meet the user's needs.
>
> In my little experiment, almost all of the screen reader users preferred
> the web page which was created to meet their needs  better.  The
> impression I'm under is that each user chose a screen reader and then
> used that screen reader to look at both web pages.  Since a user used
> the same screen reader for each of the two sample pages, the preference
> of the web page tailored for screen readers was more likely due to the
> difference in how the web page was formatted.
>
> An important fact is that what makes a web page attractive to sighted
> users often adds impediments to blind users.  If a web site developer is
> given more freedom to make certain formats more attractive with less
> need to worry about the guidelines as much, they might be more willing
> to create formats which are better suited for blind users.  This would
> seem to be better than requiring one format to meet all requirements of
> some conformance level.  Everyone's needs  has a better chance of being
> met.
>
> My suggestion is to modify the guidelines to recognize this fact.
>
> The issue is not content.  The same content can be presented in each
> format.
>
> Your statement about a "user impact matrix" is kind of interesting.
> Your argument can also be applied to the guidelines.  Don't the
> guidelines themselves make certain generalizations about particular
> groups.  For example, I can point out a number of areas of access
> problems that the guidelines don't address that cause trouble for users.
> These areas are not generally known because there has been very little
> research based on observation on what kinds of problems blind users can
> run into.  By ignoring the problems, the guidelines are assuming they
> are not issues that affect users very much.
>
> Guidelines do imply generalizations.
>
> Scott
>
> > 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
>

Received on Sunday, 12 March 2000 22:30:41 UTC