RE: General Exception for Essential Purpose

Another problem with having more sites for users is that selecting the 
right one for an individual user may be tricky. When there is one page with 
some standardisized elements and attributes we can easily provide some 
control for the user to select what is needed in each individual case and 
the user may define her own styles that apply for many sites.

When each designer does their own sets of pages you need to find the 
available alternatives and make a selection among them every time you come 
to a page. And what if the two things you need are separated to two site 
alternatives by the designer?

So if we do these alternative sites we need to think very carefully how we 
can give the users enough information to effortlessly evaluate their 
suitability in each case and enough control in selecting between them.  And 
from privacy point of view it is not a very good approach to solve this by 
asking users to provide all information of their specific disabilities to 
the sites.

Marja

At 08:23 AM 11/1/2000 +0200, Lisa Seeman wrote:
>It is better, because of users with multiple needs that are not all
>addressed any of the user group specific optimized interfaces.
>
>L
>-----Original Message-----
>From: w3c-wai-gl-request@w3.org [mailto:w3c-wai-gl-request@w3.org]On
>Behalf Of Cynthia Shelly
>Sent: Wednesday, November 01, 2000 3:33 AM
>To: 'Ian Jacobs'; Leonard R. Kasday
>Cc: w3c-wai-gl@w3.org; jacobs@w3.org; kynn@idyllmtn.com;
>asgilman@iamdigex.net
>Subject: RE: General Exception for Essential Purpose
>
>
><quote>
>  2) It is better for designers and users to produce fewer sites that
>meet
>     the needs of more users.
></quote>
>
>Now you're treating designers the way many complain they treat users <grin>
>You're presuming to know their needs better than they do.  Why *restrict*
>designers to single interface?  Why not let them decide for themselves how
>much work they're willing to do to create optimized interfaces?
>
>-----Original Message-----
>From: Ian Jacobs [mailto:ij@w3.org]
>Sent: Sunday, October 29, 2000 10:56 AM
>To: Leonard R. Kasday
>Cc: w3c-wai-gl@w3.org; jacobs@w3.org; kynn@idyllmtn.com;
>asgilman@iamdigex.net
>Subject: Re: General Exception for Essential Purpose
>
>
>"Leonard R. Kasday" wrote:
> >
> > Ian, Kynn, Al
> >
> > Thanks for all the detail on the 2.0 philosophy but I'm still not sure I
> > understand the essentials.  Would you indulge the following lapse into
> > math-ese.
> >
> > Consider
> >
> > the set of all user groups U1, U2, U3... with different sets of abilities
> > and disabilities.
> >
> > and the guidelines UA and GL for user agents and web content.
> >
> > 1. Is the goal of WAI to produce UA and GL guidelines such that if both
>are
> > followed in their entirety, than each user groups U1, U2, U3... will have
> > available maxium feasible access to all web sites?  Here "maxium feasible"
> > means the maxium that can be obtained with current knowledge and
>technology?
>
>At first glance, yes. Users have needs, we try to write guidelines
>to meet those needs, by assigning responsibilities to meet those
>needs to different parties. It's up to us to choose the scope of those
>guidelines, how many problems in the real world to account for, etc.
>
> > 2. And is it completely acceptable to fulfill this goal by providing each
> > of the user groups U1, U2, U3,.... with different versions of the site S1,
> > S2, S3... ?
>
>Yes, but:
>
>  1) I think that it may not be possible to meet some needs anyway,
>however
>     large the set of sites is.
>
>  2) It is better for designers and users to produce fewer sites that
>meet
>     the needs of more users. Also, this doesn't take into account the
>     issue of providing content that has been tailored to specific needs
>     and therefore may be inaccessible to other users. (The issue of
>     whether accessibility has to be measured on the client side or
>whether
>     it can also be measured on the server side, as long as users have
>     access to full content, etc.)
>
> > If at all possible, please answer with one of the following
> > - "yes"
> > - "no"
> > - "what  _are_  you talking about Lenny?"  <grin/>
>
>So, yes and yes. As I mentioned in an earlier email, this is a new
>model that I'm playing with in my head, and so I expect it to be fragile
>at this stage of its existence.
>
>  - Ian
>
>
> > or offer rephrasings of a sentence or two (with or without math-ese) to
> > which you can say "yes".
> >
> > Len
> >
> > p.s.
> > Also, if this is the philosophy, I don't understand where Kynn's
>"minimally
> > accessible" fallback fits in.
>
>--
>Ian Jacobs (jacobs@w3.org)   http://www.w3.org/People/Jacobs
>Tel:                         +1 831 457-2842
>Cell:                        +1 917 450-8783

Received on Wednesday, 1 November 2000 07:20:52 UTC