RE: Are Small Text buttons level 2 compliant

We had the same problem with LD last week, and Jason pointed out the issue
of responsibility, were there are no user against that solve the problem
then the responsibility of accessibility falls to the web designer.
Otherwise it is up to the user to find the solution. That is our policy.

However in the case of minor disabilities, the user will not have researched
into user agents, her friends will not tell her about new accessibility
features. Is this the web designers "responsibility" - no, but it would be
nice (again a subjective word)if s/he facilitated them anyway. The web
designer may also _want_ to do this, knowing that the more people read this
sight - the better. If so s/he may want to know _how_ to facilitate them,
and s/he  may  come to us for help.
So perhaps there is some call for a priority four, or extra points, were you
do not have to conform, there is no extra logo for your site, but it is
"nice" and helpful, even to thoughts who have not helped themselves, as much
as they could.

In terms of magnification, again take a look at the fun that I have been
having with http://www.special-needs-company.com
accessible version (not that the main site is all that inaccessible) - the
mouse on text magnification effect. Installing a script like that solves
some of the large font / small font problem.

Finally I think that there are many times when text is used instead of a
graphic, I.E.: to be seen but not read, and it _detracts_ from
accessibility. (Again see the text at the top of
http://www.special-needs-company.com for an example). If their list of all
possible areas of operations were read to someone, that person would give up
on the sit before getting to the main content of the page. If the text at
the top of special-needs had been a graphic, the alt tag could simply state
"we are active in many different areas of mild disabilities" I think that
would have been more helpful for someone using assistive technology, then
hearing thirty different areas of operations.

So maybe the guideline could state something like "were text can  contribute
to the understanding or navigation of the site, it should be presented as
text and not in a graphical format." That would disqualify logos and other
such "graphical" types text.

Thanks for reading this far,
L

-----Original Message-----
From: w3c-wai-gl-request@w3.org [mailto:w3c-wai-gl-request@w3.org]On
Behalf Of Leonard R. Kasday
Sent: Tuesday, September 26, 2000 9:31 PM
To: Kynn Bartlett; Poehlman, David; 'Kynn Bartlett'; Charles
McCathieNevile
Cc: w3c-wai-gl@w3.org; WAI ER group; WAI UA group
Subject: RE: Are Small Text buttons level 2 compliant


It's not merely a question of people choosing to not emply assistive
technology out of whim or stubborness.

Assistive technology may not produce as good a solution as accessibility
built into the web page, as I noted when I talked about problems with
magnifiers.  Don't get me wrong: magnfiers can be invaluable tools, and
some people will need them no matter what is done with the web page.  And
people need them when the web page hasn't built in the accessibility.  But
they aren't as effective as being able to simply magnify the text.  That's
why real text should be used everywhere, unless there's a really good
reason, e.g. company logos.

Len



At 10:35 AM 9/26/00 -0700, Kynn Bartlett wrote:
>At 1:28 PM -0400 9/26/00, Poehlman, David wrote:
>>I explained this in the message.  what I disagree with is that the text
can
>>be small.  some people have low enough vision that they need larger text
but
>>not use assistives to achieve it.
>
>Aha, okay.  So you are arguing that web designers have to account for
>people who need assistive technology, could benefit from assistive
>technology, may even have access to assistive technology (such as
>the screen magnifier in Windows), but who choose not to employ it?
>
>That's a very dangerous argument to propose, you realize...  I argue
>that there are ways for those users who need larger text to get the
>larger text without requiring that web designers _remove_ their
>graphical text images.  The implications of placing the burden on the
>web designer instead of on the user are that unreasonable expectations
>are asked of the designer, and she is unable to reasonably comply with
>those requirements.  Thus, she ignores them.
>
>--Kynn
>--
>--
>Kynn Bartlett <kynn@idyllmtn.com>
>http://www.kynn.com/

--
Leonard R. Kasday, Ph.D.
Institute on Disabilities/UAP and Dept. of Electrical Engineering at Temple
University
(215) 204-2247 (voice)                 (800) 750-7428 (TTY)
http://astro.temple.edu/~kasday         mailto:kasday@acm.org

Chair, W3C Web Accessibility Initiative Evaluation and Repair Tools Group
http://www.w3.org/WAI/ER/IG/

The WAVE web page accessibility evaluation assistant:
http://www.temple.edu/inst_disabilities/piat/wave/

Received on Wednesday, 27 September 2000 02:29:52 UTC