Re: Getting Old

At 12:36 PM 12/24/2000 , Marti wrote:
> > subset.  The arguments for "increased accessibility for people
> > with disabilities" are weakened whenever we adopt a well-meaning
> > principle that makes most people effectively "disabled."
>This is exactly the kind of thing that concerns me about making 'indexing'
>an accessibility issue.  This is an issue which should be of concern to all.
>By taking up an issue as broad as 'indexing' we risk credibility.

I think you're right, to some extent, but I think this is why we need
to justify our checkpoints and guidelines as explicitly overcoming
existing barriers for identifiable groups of users with disabilities.

A general statement of "indexing is good" is true, and a statement
of "indexing is good for everyone" is true, and therefore a statement
of "indexing is good for <any given subgroup of everyone>" is true --
"indexing is good for baseball fans", for example.  However, it is
incumbent upon us to identify how exactly indexing provides additional
benefits beyond those imparted to a general audience, for an identifiable
user group with one or more disabilities.

"Indexing is good for people with disabilities" is quite obviously
true, just as "...for baseball fans" is true.  But for indexing to
be an accessibility feature, we need to do a little more work and
tell _how_ it benefits someone with a disability.

For example, "indexing is of benefit to people with certain disabilities
for whom navigation schemes may prove unwieldy, even if the navigation
system is designed well".  Indexing could be thought of as an
alternate navigation scheme which allows blind users (for example)
to bypass navigation-by-hierarchy (as with Yahoo) and jump directly to
information.

As Marti has pointed out, this can be iffy -- which is why I think
we might even need better examples or justification than I can
provide.

There is a danger in making too broad of guidelines; in making "do
good web design" guidelines instead of accessibility guidelines.
People will come to the web accessibility initiative looking for
accessibility guidelines; they need a definitive and accurate source.
If we make this too broad, then we lose much of our authority and
the strength inherent in our guidelines -- and most importantly,
we may lose sight of the human aspect of accessibility.

As much as it is important for there to be someone or some group
advocating "good web design", it's even more important that people
with disabilities have _their_ voice.  There is a danger in becoming
so generic that those unique voices get lost in the crowd, as we
(WAI) are one of the few organizations who can speak for/as them
on technical issues of web design.

We need to take care not to dilute those voices.

--Kynn

-- 
Kynn Bartlett  <kynn@idyllmtn.com>                    http://kynn.com/
Sr. Engineering Project Leader, Reef-Edapta       http://www.reef.com/
Chief Technologist, Idyll Mountain Internet   http://www.idyllmtn.com/
Contributor, Special Edition Using XHTML     http://kynn.com/+seuxhtml
Unofficial Section 508 Checklist           http://kynn.com/+section508

Received on Sunday, 24 December 2000 15:58:32 UTC