Re: A proposal for changing the guidelines

until the user agents and authoring tools are up to speed for a rapid
application environment, i think database driven sites are the answer to
push information.  this would use personalization and content management.
If you want a CSS e-comemrce web site, you get it.  most of your high-end
web sites use these tools.  its the mid-level and mom and pop shops that
cannot not afford these tools.  we are going to need to look at audience
segmentation.

rob


----- Original Message -----
From: Charles McCathieNevile <charles@w3.org>
To: Scott Luebking <phoenixl@netcom.com>
Cc: <w3c-wai-gl@w3.org>
Sent: Sunday, March 12, 2000 10:29 PM
Subject: Re: A proposal for changing the guidelines


> Scott,
>
> The guidelines promote Universal design, rather than targetted design,
> precisely in order to avoid the problem of helping one group at the
expense
> of another. They recognise that there may be situations in which content
is
> created in a way that is not generally accessible, and provide for that
> content to also be provided in a generally accessible format in order to
> claim conformance for that content. Note that this is not the same as a
> text-only version. For example, there are more people with partial vision
> than there are blind people in Australia by several times, and I presume
that
> this is the case elsewhere. Most of these people find images useful to a
> certain extent (if they are properly used, which is a big if) and it is
> possible through good design to use graphics in a way which does not have
> anegative impact on blind users. Such universal design stretegies serve
the
> various communities much better than a couple of groups being targetted
> (prehaps completely blind and completely deaf) and every other group being
> ignored.
>
> The guidelines make no distinction between dynamically and statically
> generated content because they describe requirements so that end-users can
> access content.
>
> If you can provide us with information about access problems that are not
> addressed by the curret guidelines, please do, so we can address them in
> revisions. That is why we seek a diverse group of members for the working
> group - no one person is likely to know all the problemfaced by all the
users
> of the web.
>
> Cheers
>
> Charles
>
> On Sun, 12 Mar 2000, Scott Luebking wrote:
> [snip]
>   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.
>
>

Received on Sunday, 12 March 2000 22:54:56 UTC