Higher Profile for Non-Blind Disabled Users

The state of Texas is doing a good thing by setting accessibility
standards:  http://www.dir.state.tx.us/standards/S201-12.htm

However, they're also doing a bad thing by believing that the only
challenge that needs to be addressed is accessibility for blind
users:

(5) Generally accessible Internet site -- A state Web site that:
     (A) complies with the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines
         for persons with visual disabilities promulgated by the W3C;
     (B) contains no priority 1 errors; and
     (C) complies with HTML standards published by the W3C.

Policies of these kind scare me because they represent a fundamental
misunderstanding of what we're all about, which suggests that we
(WAI participants) may not be doing our jobs effectively.

It is worrisome that people think of accessibility as ONLY visually
impaired users.

We need to make sure that people with a wide variety of disabilities
are "visible" in whatever we produce.  I think we're doing that now,
but if so, we still need to look at why misinterpretations happen
anyway.

--Kynn

--
Kynn Bartlett <kynn@reef.com>
Technical Developer Liaison
Reef North America
Accessibility - W3C - Integrator Network
Tel +1 949-567-7006
________________________________________
BUSINESS IS DYNAMIC. TAKE CONTROL.
________________________________________
http://www.reef.com

Received on Tuesday, 21 August 2001 20:40:22 UTC