Re: the text in images issue

From: "Lisa Seeman" <seeman@netvision.net.il>
> I think SVG does now have widespread commercial tools since the Adobe
> ilistrates and the viewer is avialible for free download.
> The download is quick and painless, so it seems to be more a question of
> public awerness of these new tecnologies.

Awareness is the key. If it doesn't come in the box, most people don't
download it. This is especially true of designers, who are the entire market
for Adobe's tools.

> I think the argument that we should aviode recomending somthing, that has
> commersial builing and a viewing tool, just because it is not widly used,
> falles a bit flat.

Before we even know how (not to mention whether) designers are going to use
it? How would WCAG 1.0 have been drafted before HTML 1.0 was published?

> Afterall the WAI is about recomending difrent ways of doing things, that
are
> morte accesible. If we were only to recomend what peaple are already
doing -
> well need I say more.

But people are not already doing it. Not in the design community, and not
among anyone but the curious and early adopters. SVG is not widespread, and
it's not going to become that way overnight. There is a lot of
infrastructure to be built before that happens, and my fear is that to
prescribe a solution which clearly will not meet the needs of many people,
including those without up-to-date accessibility technologies, is the
argument that falls flat.

I agree that there should be a strong nudge toward SVG, but "use it right
now and here's how," especially if the idea is that it's tied to a certain
level of compliance.

----
matt

Received on Tuesday, 19 December 2000 12:01:11 UTC