Re: Kynn's Reply: Textual Images vs. Styled Text

At 02:29 PM 11/28/00 -0500, Leonard R. Kasday wrote:
>3.1 When an appropriate markup language exists

In addition to "for example" and "avoid" you have to consider what "exists" 
means.

The dada POV which sort of says "nothing *means* anything" might be an 
appropriate medium for recent exchanges but the letter/spirit/intent of the 
checkpoint is reasonably clear. Actually I think this has been asked and 
answered several times. There *exists* a means of doing this (other than 
having a sighted person read it to you, which isn't really an "appropriate 
markup language" although I'm beginning to wonder <g>) therefore the site 
in question is in violation.

I don't think anyone doubts this very much. There is contention about 
whether this is too strong in view of the problems that authors encounter 
when they examine how their stuff looks in all the myriad of various levels 
of CSS support + the requirement to consider older browsers, etc. But as 
some lyric asks "What's Love Got to Do With It?" - even in the situation 
you describe where there's some regulation requiring conformance it isn't 
unheard of for them to ignore it or find a way around it ("undue burden" 
comes to mind). In the U.S. the supposed "promise of Section 508" is 
tempered by the fact that a very similar rule (same number) has been on the 
books and completely ignored for about 15 years.

The use of image text is against the rules WCAG 1.0, the laws of the State 
of Pennsylvania, and probably Oz and Canada and possibly Portugal.

One of the "needs" of the Web site designers who toil to make the presence 
of your state "attractive" and "accessible" is that there's no LAW that 
they have to conform to some standard of "branding" but there is one that 
they have to conform to the guidelines. If they resist this on the basis 
that they don't think it "looks good" then we, as Fascist dictators will 
see to it that their artistic sensibilities are violated and they'll just 
have to work around these archaic notions that prevent them from doing 
their most attractive work.

It's not required by the state that the site has to look the same on every 
conceivable platform, but that it "transform gracefully" - I just don't 
understand where the aesthetics will get their wrists slapped? What is the 
objection to making it work for more people.

--
Love.
                 ACCESSIBILITY IS RIGHT - NOT PRIVILEGE

Received on Tuesday, 28 November 2000 15:18:30 UTC