- From: Adam Victor Reed <areed2@calstatela.edu>
- Date: Fri, 11 May 2001 16:12:17 -0700
- To: w3c-wai-gl@w3.org
On Fri, May 11, 2001 at 09:57:18AM -0400, Anne Pemberton wrote: > I'm not sure how "fairly common" it is to browse with images turned > off... On this list, some folks say they use the web that way, but in > my life away from this list, NO ONE I KNOW uses the web that way! Just > as I don't know anyone in real life who uses television without the > screen on, or listens to anything but music on the radio.... This is not just to Ann... Do you know people who just don't watch TV except sometimes for long, uninterrupted films? People who occasionally listen to the radio for relaxation, but can't work if someone else in the office is playing the radio out loud? People who say they can't use the Web, and try to make do with print media only - or if they do use it, can't actually get the content until they have printed it out on paper? In every class I teach, I meet students who simply did not know that they _were_ able to use the Web just fine if they only turned off javascript, and animations, and flash plugins, and style sheets, and image loading, and IF the content happened to be accessible without all that. They are the same students who used to get As from older teachers who taught without multimedia - and came close a flunking anything taught with flashy videos. In some middle schools, up to 20% of pupils are drugged into semi-stupor, when all they need, to be able to learn normally, is a quiet classroom without distractions, and a school library without blaring radios and video screens. Now, a working group on accessibility is the last place I'd expect to read that "NO ONE I KNOW uses the web that way!" A more relevant question: how many people do you know who don't use the web at all, but would love to, if they only knew how to get rid of all that flashing, blinking, scrolling noise? The only difference here, vs. what you choose to call "real life", is that more of us know, and are trying to use what we know to make a difference. This includes you, Ann. You are doing good work for users with an important category of accessibility needs. But so are the rest of us. We are trying to help each other, including you, to make web content accessible to people with many different differences. Please learn that we are not playing a zero-sum game, and that it does not advance accessibility, for those whom you are trying to help, to disparage the needs of those whom you have not yet learned to notice. -- Adam Reed areed2@calstatela.edu Context matters. Seldom does *anything* have only one cause.
Received on Friday, 11 May 2001 19:18:42 UTC