Re: WAKE UP CALL !-( mouse gestures

>Less hot air from you folks and a little more shoulder to the wheel 
>could be a prayer for the day.
>javascript crap is very prevalent,

WAI-GL crap is also prevalent and more germane to our discussion.

In all fairness to my esteemed colleague, he does glancingly bruise 
an important point. WAI needs a much more real-world evaluation of 
issues that straddle browsers and content. Pop-up windows; longdesc 
handling; user stylesheets; and frame and iframe handling are topics 
that come to mind.

WAI's reflex in such cases tends to be simple: BAN IT! even though 
none of the people advocating the banning has ever bothered to survey 
the existing uses of those technologies, let alone ways to deal with 
inaccessibility that do not force authors to rewrite their work the 
WAI way.

I certainly agree with Phill's posting:

<http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/w3c-wai-ig/2003OctDec/0426.html>

>The whole point of my earlier post was to question the logic of 
>where to place the burden of removing the barriers, where to place 
>the burden of doing the transformation?. Options include the author, 
>the browser+assistive technology (including server side), and the 
>user's configuration settings in the Operating System/platform.
>
>[...]
>
>The only way to accommodate both those who want multiple windows 
>opened - and - those who need to only have one is for the assistive 
>technology, browser, and/or the operating system/platform to handle 
>it. When we place all the burden on the author, by telling her that 
>she can't use code that opens the help page in a new window, then 
>everyone unfairly gets the same result.
>
>I do not agree with placing overlapping checkpoints in the various 
>guidelines. For example if we place a requirement in WCAG to require 
>the author to tell the user that the link will open in a new window, 
>and then we also tell the user agent in UAAG to also notify the user 
>that the link will open in a new window, then what the end users 
>ends up hearing is: "opens in a new window, opens in a new window" 
>twice. As a user I can turn off the second announcement, if the 
>browser and/or assistive technology will allow, but how do I turn 
>off what the author placed in the content? As an end user I can't go 
>randomly deleting text, nor is it always efficient to ask the author 
>to add more notation to conditionally exclude some of the text.

My working philosophy for today is: If we have a chance to offload 
what would otherwise be a Web Content Accessibility Guideline onto 
one of the other guidelines, let's do it. WCAG WG tends to screw up 
more than the other working groups do. WCAG WG also seems less 
clueful about the Web, and more contemptuous of it, than the other 
working groups. The more we let other working groups handle these 
issues, the fewer problems we'll have after everyone's guidelines are 
frozen and published.

-- 

     Joe Clark | joeclark@joeclark.org | <http://joeclark.org/access/>
     Author, _Building Accessible Websites_ | <http://joeclark.org/book/>
     Expect criticism if you top-post

Received on Wednesday, 26 November 2003 13:29:50 UTC