- From: <goliver@accease.com>
- Date: Sun, 03 Mar 2002 01:45:34 -0800 (PST)
- To: GV@TRACE.WISC.EDU
- Cc: w3c-wai-gl@w3.org
I don't like the idea of different versions for different groups for the following reasons 1. Resource Discovery How do we ensure that the 'right group' gets to the 'right version'? If there are links from the default rendering what are they going to say? 'Link to Text Only Version?' Well, how do I know if I am 'supposed' to use the text only version? 'Link for Blind and Visually Impaired People?' This doesn't do it for me, it sounds discriminatory. Also see 5. What's to stop people landing (on a search from Google for example) on the 'wrong' version. What do they do then? How do they know they are on the 'wrong' version? 2. The skills aren't there In my experience so far, there simply is not the awareness of what the needs are of different 'groups of disabled people', to create an accessible site for a specific group. The process of producing two or more version will be expensive enough without all the potential rework to fix up stuff. 3. More than one verion means less testing and lower quality. This has been my experience so far. Site quality is lower, resouces get stretched, stuff gets missed. 4. No site will ever be fully accessible. There seems to be inherent in this argument somewhere that we can make a site 100% accessible. I think that it is helpful to look at the bricks and mortar world in this regard. In NZ anyway an accessible door (in the regulations) has a handle on it which can be opened by 'most' disabled people. A 100% accessible door would be one of these Star Trek things that simply opened automatically (optional swish swish sound) but they are not specified in the regulations (they are too expensive). These regulation were pioneered by disabled people. A pragmatic ('non 100%') response to a real world problem. 5. Disabled People want the same solution as everyone else. OK, so I only have a small sample size, but that's the message I get. In short I believe that accessible design is universal design. Regards Graham Checkpoint 4.S.1 If you are serving content in different forms to different users to comply with the guidelines, then at least one version must meet all the guidelines (with which compliance is asserted) and that form must be complete and up to date:Success Criteria 1) that version provides accessible forms of all the content that is provided in the default presentation 2) that version can be obtained from visiting the same URI 3) that version is always up to date (same content) as default 4) that version can be easily selected by users using technologies that area accessible under these guidelines (e.g. you don't have to operate an inaccessible technology in order to request the accessible form of the content) NOTE: The reason that one version must be used to meet all the guidelines instead of using different versions to meet different guidelines is to allow access by people having multiple disabilities -- and because authors may not understand which combinations of guidelines must be used together to provide access. Gregg AccEase Ltd : Making on-line information accessible Phone : +64 9 846 6995 Email : goliver@accease.com
Received on Sunday, 3 March 2002 04:45:39 UTC