RE: Baseline capabilities

Amongst requirements I have been specified for a CD-ROM on accessibility
recently are DOS / Windows 3.1 compatibility, since there are apparently a
lot of users in the market who are running those systems still. Certainly as
I walk around offices I see a lot of Windows 95 systems being used.

I agree that we should go with Windows NT instead of Windows 2000.

An alternative would have been to set a percentage of market share threshold,
but that didn't seem like such a good idea. The "80%" approach is a major
cause of the problem in the first place.

cheers

Charles


On Tue, 17 Oct 2000, Dick Brown wrote:

  I think using 5-year-old Win95 is stretching. On the other hand, I can't say
  for a fact how much difference it makes, as many (most?) apps that work on
  Win98 work fine on 95 as well.
  
  Also, while you went with an old version of Windows, you went with the
  newest version of NT (Win2000).
  
  Dick Brown
  Microsoft
  
  -----Original Message-----
  From: Charles McCathieNevile [mailto:charles@w3.org]
  Sent: Tuesday, October 17, 2000 3:13 PM
  To: WAI GL
  Subject: Baseline capabilities
  
  
  One of the things we have struggled with again and again is the "until
  technology X is widely impemented, use some nasty hack".
  
  On the one hand, Accessibility in theory is no good to people if they can't
  actually make use of it themselves.  On the other hand, this can lead to a
  problem of developers not putting a high priority on new features that will
  improve accesssibility, since there is no market for them becuase everyone
  is
  relying on the old method anyway. So the situation doesn't improve very
  fast.
  
  In addition, it is often harder for people with disabilities to actually go
  about upgrading and learning a new version of software (or a new tool
  entirely).
  
  And as a group, we do not, as far as I can tell, have a consensus on what
  can
  be done reliably with CSS, or when it will be acceptable to rely on
  Javascript. We don't even have a method for finding an answer to the
  question
  "is CSS implemented widely enough to require its use for specifying fonts?"
  
  So I think we first need to work out how to answer such questions in
  general,
  and then to apply our method to some specific things we need to know (can
  the
  Java Accessibility Bridge be relied on? When will SVG be a reasonable
  solution?). This will give us some good test cases as well as some
  information that we need to establish.
  
  So I propose the following:
  
  A technology is considered to be sufficiently implemented when it is
  implemented in at least two free products available that meet the following
  conditions:
  
  1. There must betwo such products available for each of
  
      - Windows 95
      - Windows 2000
      - MacOS 8+
      - Unix (must include linux)
  
  2. They must be known to be usable with at least two speech output systems,
  including one free one where that is available.
  
  3. They must work with standard keyboard modifications (including modified
  keyboards) and one voice input system.
  
  4. The products must have been available for at least 6 months.
  
  Note that this can apply to partial features of a technology. For example,
  it
  might be possible to state that CSS font and colour control are sufficiently
  implemented, but CSS behaviour and layout control are not.
  
  Cheers
  
  Charles McCN
  
  
  

-- 
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, Australia
September - November 2000: 
W3C INRIA, 2004 Route des Lucioles, BP 93, 06902 Sophia Antipolis Cedex, France

Received on Wednesday, 18 October 2000 05:22:50 UTC