Re: Green Fingers

At 7:46 PM -0400 4/23/01, Anne Pemberton wrote:
>The WCAG promises that the guidelines will result in pages usable by
>disabled persons, so if the flashy stuff is needed by some disabled people,
>the promise isn't fulfilled.

This is correct.  It's important that those of us who may have a
natural disdain for "flashy stuff" realize that it may very well
spell the difference between the ability to use a site or not use a
site for -other people- who are not like us.

One early Edapta demo, in addition to providing user interfaces for
screenreaders, large text audiences, and limited dexterity users,
also went the other way and created a "turn UP the volume" site
interface.  This was meant for a (stereotypical) Gen X/Nintendo
Generation person who might actually _like_ to have animation,
blaring rock music, and so on.  For such a person it would be
EASIER to access information in this manner, but obviously you
would not want to provide that as an interface to everyone and
espect, "well, grandpa, you just don't understand how to degrade
it gracefully!"

>The WCAG promise that the income of disabled
>persons will flow to those who follow the guidelines is broken if the
>guidelines even hint that a site should NOT include stuff needed by
>Jonathon's folks.

Er, I'd be careful here, WCAG makes no promises of income flow in
any direction.  What WCAG _does_ claim is useful enough that we need
not complicate the matter by ascribing additional promises to it
which are not really in scope.

--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 10:02:38 UTC