Re: Compliance ratings

At 5:16 PM -0600 4/23/01, Paul Bohman wrote:
>Maybe it would be best to rank the accessibility of a page or a site on four
>different criteria:
>1. accessibility to people with visual disabilities

There are several types of disabilities rolled together here which
actually require very different approaches -- e.g. color-blind vs.
unable to see at all.  Maybe these are too broad of categories?

>2. accessibility to people with hearing disabilities
>3. accessibility to people with motor disabilities
>4. accessibility to people with cognitive/neurological disabilities.

[...]

>3. Perhaps the _MOST IMPORTANT_ benefit, however, would be that the rating
>system actually means something for each disability type. Hypothetically
>speaking, we won't be forced to relegate some guidelines that are very
>important to people with cognitive disabilities into a lower priority level.

I like this approach primarily because it does not easily dispose of
the human factor in accessibility.  There is danger if we completely
abstract away the concepts such that we never mention people with
disabilities when discussing issues of access -- if it becomes too
much about XML and tags and RDF and schemas, then we've lost track of
the fact that ultimately we are dealing with human beings here and
how they are able to use the web effectively.

--Kynn
-- 
Kynn Bartlett <kynn@reef.com>
Technical Developer Liaison
Reef North America
Tel +1 949-567-7006
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BUSINESS IS DYNAMIC. TAKE CONTROL.
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http://www.reef.com

Received on Tuesday, 24 April 2001 10:02:06 UTC