- From: Geoff Deering <gdeering@acslink.net.au>
- Date: Thu, 24 Jan 2002 06:46:14 +1100
- To: <kynn-eda@idyllmtn.com>
- Cc: "Kynn Bartlett" <kynn-edapta@idyllmtn.com>, "Charles McCathieNevile" <charles@w3.org>, "WAI GL" <w3c-wai-gl@w3.org>
The gist of the point I am making is that, besides the issue of accessibility, there is a whole realm of good business reasoning to following the principles of these guidelines, and I feel those benefits increase, the more passionately these guidelines and principles are adopted. I am not talking about laying down the guidelines as The One And Only Law; but rather as a concise set of guidelines, that also show that this WG is not only addressing the issue of accessibility, but convey the concern that it also addresses much wider business benefits as well. The guidelines enhance better usability principles and better and smarter business practices, and better ROI. I am also not saying; ban images, or images are wrong, or anything like that. One can follow the guidelines loosely or strictly (as in the DTDs) and still meet high degrees of accessibility. That is not the point I was making in all this discussion. What I am saying though is, in places I have worked, I have had to work to requirement documents and specs, and everyone one of those was taken literarily. If the WCAG1 Guidelines are the specs, and they require AA conformance, those guidelines and their application are taken literarily, because there is a comeback if they are not interpreted literally. Generally, I feel a great deal of gratitude and appreciation to the people who have provided such GL, because I regard them as insightful, knowledgeable, skilful and liberating, rather than restricting. (That is another thing; you can embrace a discipline wholeheartedly and be liberated by it). Now again, I am not saying everyone needs to see it this way, obviously they don't, and that contributes to the process too, that is not the point I am making. But I do feel it is disheartening to see (what I see as) loose adoptions of the guidelines on sites with AA and AAA logos. It's also interesting to note just how many sites that have AA or AAA on them do not comply with WCAG 3.2 I do agree that there may be more expense in the build phase when trying to achieve AAA compliance. But when it applies to large sites managed by content management systems, the savings are immense. > I would argue that if an experienced and knowledgeable consultant or > developer, in 2002, is still using images where text/HTML/CSS are now a > valid alternative, they are adding costs to the design and running of their > client or employer's site, as well as the additional cost of maintenance. This is not an argument based on accessibility, though. Our mandate is not to create guidelines which provide for The One True Way To Do Web Design, our mandate is to provide advice on how to make content accessible. If someone wants to add costs to the design of their site, that's not our place to come in and say it's banned. Likewise, designing for accessibility often adds to the cost of designing, running, and maintaining a site, so clearly this argument is not one that should hold weight within our guidelines. > If you use images to represent text; > * They do not scale (re: Jim Ley's comments 17th Jan) If you use images at all, they do not scale, comments about SVG aside. (And SVG can't be used for all applications.) The solution is not to say "never use images" no more than the solution is to say "never use images as text." > * They only look good at certain resolutions, try looking at graphic > navigation text designed for 800 x 600 in 17-21 inch monitors at upwards of > 1280-1024 and it start to become ugly and unusable. I'm confused, is "ugly" suddenly part of accessibility as well? Is it our place to write guidelines based on aesthetical appeal? There is also a strong argument to be made that it makes more sense to "look good" to 99% of the audience and "look ugly" to 1%, as long as the content is still reachable in some manner. Note that pure CSS designs "look ugly" in default rendering on Netscape 3, but our argument has always been "that doesn't matter, the content is accessible." If we are going to ban "images as text" then we should ban CSS. > * Don't print as well as text (as mentioned by Bruce Bailey) This again isn't an accessibility problem, except through the most contrived of arguments. This is an argument about the aesthetics of printed images. But so what? Is there going to be a rule saying that I can't have an ugly page, next? See, the whole problem here boils down to the "banning", in my opinion. The guideline doesn't say, "if you decide, for whatever reason, to use these, then here's how to ensure you don't lock out people" -- it says simply "you can't use those, period." Arguments saying "there are good reasons not to use this" are fine and good, but they don't justify outright banning, if there are legitimate ways to use these types of things while still ensuring accessibility. This kind of thinking is a step back to 1996 style web accessibility, when the message seemed to be "don't use images, they're evil" and "don't use multimedia, it's evil." The message for 2002 has to be, "here's how to make something accessible." You wouldn't say, "don't put an audio recording on a web site, there's maintenance problems nd it's ugly," you'd say "go ahead and put up the audio recording, but make the content available in text as well." --Kynn
Received on Wednesday, 23 January 2002 14:46:34 UTC