Re: Minutes from 16 November 2000 WCAG WG telecon

William,

>I guess I meant to imply that the overwhelming majority of people who 
>*write* for the Web are in a Wysiwyg frame of mind and the "s" in there has 
>dominated most of their lives.

I wish that were so ... so often in looking for web sites that can be used
by young students, I hit too many pages of all text that begs for someone
to add illustration and mark-up. Sites that were once kid-friendly have
been redone to be "professional" and absent of graphics to guide the user.
An example is http://www.whitehouse.gov/kids/html/home.html which used to
be a link to a great-looking kid-friendly site, bright colors, labeled
graphics to link to kid-useful parts of the whitehouse site. Now is as
dreary as the uniform bindings of the encyclopedia on a dusty shelf! The
change happened in recent weeks, I've no idea why, but it was disappointing
when the teacher pulled up this dreary site for her 2nd graders instead of
the site I was expecting for her.

Two weeks ago I used the web as an introduction to a e-mail exchange
between some of our students and students in Israel. Opened with a
well-designed site for a world map that you could click down into to a map
of the region, and then of the country. Then two sites with images (tourism
sites) that could have been greatly improved if background music had been
included ... as it was we had to go to a fourth site, to listen to the
music with nothing on the screen but the list of music choices and a nice
background.  

>I wish I could point to examples but perhaps something like 
>http://redhotjazz.com/  which uses pictures, graphics, sound, and on the 
>surface (which I've never gone below) appears to be highly structured. I 
>don't know if it qualifies under the guidelines but I know at least one 
>blind person who likes it a lot. It looks good, works pretty well and IMO 
>exemplifies the importance of using structure. If that structure is usable 
>by someone using a screen reader I have no idea.
>--
Nice site! I had to do some searching in the structure to find the links to
music, but it worked very well when I found them. 

				Anne
Anne L. Pemberton
http://www.pen.k12.va.us/Pav/Academy1
http://www.erols.com/stevepem/Homeschooling
apembert@crosslink.net
Enabling Support Foundation
http://www.enabling.org

Received on Sunday, 19 November 2000 10:56:12 UTC