Re: Requirement for Disability-based Checkpoint Identification

At 12:06 PM 10/9/00 -0400, Al Gilman wrote:
>Clarifying, representative examples are required.  Not a definitive 
>statement of the boundaries of those affected.  So, we need the 
>relation-trace, the mapping.

IMHO the conditions we so "conveniently" consider "disabilities" are 
totally irrelevant. Charters aside, we must focus on the Web being 
accessible to all - people and machines. Some people can't see, hear, move, 
etc. but that's a great big SO WHAT? insofar as the overall problem of 
accessing the Web is concerned. Blindless people don't "get it" but we 
needn't share their preconceptions and lack of vision. Categorizing only 
some as "affected" isn't where it's at - the bell tolls for us all.

As I was carted from an airplane in Houston (on my way home from Bristol) 
to a hospital, I thought about items like "is disease disability" and other 
less profound stuff and was really amazed that in an era of potentially 
enabling info transfer we're still in the era of ID bracelets about 
allergic drug reactions instead of a means of transferring all the crucial 
vital information to the extent that some nurse is nursing instead of 
asking me "are you taking any medications, what's your address, who is your 
insurance carrier" and writing the answers by hand on a piece of paper 
that... you get the idea.

We're all disabled - there is no "last 20%" of some spurious demographic 
category. We're talking about the accessibility of the Web that 
informs/connects us all and we'd best not be into claiming that this is 
some "do-good" undertaking to help a handful of poor unfortunates.

We're all in this together.
We're all members of one another.
You know the rest - if not it's at the bottom.
--
Love.
                 ACCESSIBILITY IS RIGHT - NOT PRIVILEGE