Re: Minutes from 16 November 2000 WCAG WG telecon

At 02:27 PM 11/20/00 -0800, Kynn Bartlett wrote:
>You have not provided any reason that anyone creating a page should -care-

When Rachel Carson wrote "Silent Spring" it was held that polluting wasn't 
all that big a deal because the atmosphere (and ocean) are so big that just 
the little bit that one person/farmer/gardener could do wouldn't matter 
much. Same with a fleet of supersonic jetliners and the ozone layer. After 
all if we were to ignore the academician who projected that such a fleet 
would have dire consequences (like all of us having cancer by now), we 
could make the trip to Australia in 5 hours instead of 17!

Good netizenship is one reason not to pollute the Web with what Sean is 
complaining about as "blatantly illegal" stuff. It may not matter much if 
one elementary school teacher in Virginia doesn't conform to sound 
practices that will help in the seamless integration of Web postings into 
some vaguely imagined future "Semantic Web" - after all the jobs lost in 
the forest industry might be more important than one particular variety of 
owl, and these "forbidden practices" are still forgiven by browsers and the 
kids can use the sites, etc.

Sure it seems like a stretch to equate failure to acknowledge the 
importance of content/style/structure separations while things are working 
just fine with cyber-pollution, but the people who conceived this stuff and 
prepare for the next generation of standards aren't some kind of 
ivory-towerites who are out of touch with "reality" - this is a reality 
that they not only created, but know a lot about. I'm sure you don't mean 
to ridicule Tim and the others but they are saying these things, setting 
these standards, making these predictions from a point of view quite 
different from the purely "what's good for my company is good for the Web" 
POV.

I think Sean's shrill approach is abrasive to many  but he's concerned - 
and if not rightly so, then nothing's lost by abiding the cautions he 
raises. If he (and others of us) is right then maybe if he's to tone down 
his "alarums" we might tone down the sarcasm about "saint Tim", etc.

We are all in this together.

--
Love.
                 ACCESSIBILITY IS RIGHT - NOT PRIVILEGE

Received on Monday, 20 November 2000 18:09:32 UTC