Re: Green Fingers

At 9:34 PM +0100 4/23/01, Jonathan Chetwynd wrote:
>However, I am not seeking a universal solution applicable to all web 
>pages, that might suit alt tags, but cleaarly we cannot expect every 
>page to provide multimedia content.

Part of the problem with this discussion is that "we" are assuming
that the way to solve one problem -- mandating "you must put <x>
on every page to make it accessible" -- is the way to solve all
accessibility problems.

That approach works for accessibility of images to blind folks --
if we say "you MUST put alt text on your image" then you fix the
most glaring (historically) problem facing people who can't see.
This was the first accessibility problem ever tackled by web
designers, and it set an expectation that all problems could be
solved by rules of this nature.

But it doesn't work in practice -- as Jonathan says, it's not
reasonable to expect that every page will provide multimedia content.

If we think only in terms of absolutes, then we are stuck with either
saying "all pages MUST provide multimedia content" (which is not
a rational requirement) or we try to twist ourselves into logical
contortions of the sort "when it is REQUIRED for accessibility then
you MUST provide multimedia content" which is somewhere between a
null statement and a truism, neither of which is useful in practice
either.

>If this means that universality gets lost by the wayside, too bad, 
>these people are human, and in great danger of being ignored.

This is another good point here -- universality is a useful tool, and 
it's gotten
us somewhere so far, but it's not our ultimate goal.  Our ultimate 
goal is inclusion,
and you can get there in different manners.

--Kynn
-- 
Kynn Bartlett <kynn@reef.com>
Technical Developer Liaison
Reef North America
Tel +1 949-567-7006
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Received on Tuesday, 24 April 2001 10:02:55 UTC