Re: A little back to basics (Re: Users should have (Re: Fresh start? Re: Minimal Browser Capabilities))

Hi,

I think there's a little difference between theory and practice.
Achievability is often not a concern in theory.  However, I believe that
the disabled world needs to be invested in making choices which are
readily achievable by other people.  In the long run, the disabled world
benefits when goals are readily achievable.

One of the aspects of readily achievable is how much resources are
needed to reach a goal.  Some disabled people do not believe that the
issue of resources should be a criteria for making choices.  However, in
the real world, there is competition for resources.  In general, the
more resources that are needed to achieve a goal, the lesser the chance
of its being achieved.  Since the issue of disability access often has
not a very high priority, a useful approach will be to look at ways to
reduce the amount of resources needed to achieve accessibility.

Within the product world the concept of designing for manufacturing
(DFM) has developed.  Basically, when a product is designed, the design
takes in consideration not only the end results for the product, but
also how much work is needed in the manufacturing process to achieve the
end results.  Before  this concept evolved, designers didn't worry as
much about what the manufacturers had to do since that was as the the
manufacturer's problem.

A similar concept can be applied to creating guidelines, e.g. designing
for implementation (DFI) where the choices made take in consideration
how much work needs to occur for implementing the guidelines.

Theoretically, transformation is an interesting idea.  However, looking
at the issue from the wed page developer's point of view, how much
resources need to be used to achieve transformation?  First, work needs
to be done to learn what transformation means in various situations.
Second, there's applying what is believed to be needed for
transformation to a web page.  The next step is one which can require
significant resources.  The transformations has to be tested for many
combinations of browsers and access technology.  People very often want
to dismiss this step as not being as critical.  However, if some
transformation doesn't work, it is a rare user who will not have a
negative reaction.  The next step can also be resource intensive.  The
web page  developers fixes the transformation problems and then re-tests
to see what transformations that used to work are now having problems.

Scott

> What about the following:
> 
> An accessible Web page can easily be transformed into equivalent forms 
> suitable for different media, such as text, audio or images. User's not 
> able to access one media because of their disabilities should be able to 
> access the equivalent information in a usable manner. An accessible page 
> also supports the use of different interaction devices.
> 
> - having shorter or longer versions of the information or abstracts would 
> help too or simpler versions of language but currently there are no exact 
> definitions
> 
> Marja

Received on Sunday, 30 December 2001 15:56:22 UTC