World Wide Web Consortium Comments on Copyright Office Proposal to Use Single-Vendor Web Service

<cite url="http://www.w3.org/2005/08/22-w3c-prereg-standards-comments.html">
Proposed Single-Vendor Preregistration Service Will Exclude Large Classes of
Potential Users
[...] One of the distinct benefits of online access to government services
is the increased opportunities it offers to people with disabilities. The
policy of requiring use of a particular software product for accessing
Copyright Office services, however, could put Web users with disabilities at
a significant disadvantage. Users with disabilities often must augment their
browsing software with special assistive software and/or hardware
("assistive technology"). The combination of assistive technology and Web
browser that a given individual with disabilities has installed and
configured may or may not be based on Internet Explorer, given the varied
accessibility features of mainstream browsers. In addition, some individuals
with disabilities rely on alternative browsers (for instance, "talking
browsers") that are designed to meet their specific needs. Users with
disabilities rely on a standards-based Web to ensure that services they
access on the Web will be usable through the variety of mainstream software
and specialized assistive technologies that they use. A single-vendor
strategy such as that proposed here will force many disabled users to
re-tool their software and hardware environment, or face exclusion from the
preregistration services. The practical effect of this exclusion will not
only be on content creators themselves, but also on any employees of content
creation firms whose job it is to make preregistration submissions.
[...]

Respectfully submitted,

Tim Berners-Lee, <timbl@w3.org>
Director, World Wide Web Consortium

Daniel J. Weitzner, <djweitzner@w3.org>
Technology and Society Domain Leader, World Wide Web Consortium

</cite>

This means that the theory to guarantee accessibility with IE + Jaws (due
that the bigger group of blind user have this configuration) means have a
wrong idea about web accessibility.

Received on Wednesday, 24 August 2005 09:58:09 UTC