RE: spec-waving Philistines [was: RE: Conclusions from Discussion today]

Al,
Thank you for providing the link to that movie.  That will be very useful in
the next class I'm teaching at that particular school.  It is definitely a
worthwhile link to have in any material.

Sincerely,
Lee Roberts
President/CEO
Rose Rock Design, Inc.
Building web sites accessible by EVERYONE
http://www.roserockdesign.com

-----Original Message-----
From: w3c-wai-gl-request@w3.org [mailto:w3c-wai-gl-request@w3.org]On
Behalf Of Al Gilman
Sent: Friday, February 22, 2002 10:01 AM
To: Lee Roberts; WCAG List
Subject: spec-waving Philistines [was: RE: Conclusions from Discussion
today]


At 09:12 AM 2002-02-22 , Lee Roberts wrote:
>
>I had that particular situation come up in a class I was teaching
yesterday.
>When I expressed they should stop using FONT tags, the class got into an
>uproar.  They stated that as long as the tag is still listed in the
>standards it is okay to you.  Unfortunately, they have no idea what XHTML
>is.
>

At least the come-back on this one seems clear.

In the class, they need to learn what makes a difference for people.  People
who happen to have disabilities.

If what they are claiming were good enough, the W3C that Recommended HTML
4.0 would not have seen any need to issue a WCAG 1.0 as a Recommendation,
too.

It's just "I'm sorry; it would be nice if life were that simple.  But that's
not how the cookie crumbles."

If you are facing a group that systematically hasn't got the first clue (as
it appears you are) I recommend something like Neal Ewers's little video at

 Introduction to the Screen Reader
 http://wiscinfo.doit.wisc.edu/ltde/access/ewers.htm

To retreat into arcana like 'deprecated' or 'XHTML' as the basis of our
argument is to lose the battle before we have started to fight.

We need to get across that accessibility practices make a real difference to
real people.  This then provides the motivation for taking a closer look at
how we employ the formats.

Al

Received on Friday, 22 February 2002 11:25:57 UTC