Re: contact with developers (was RE: webwatch-l What To Do About .gif Files)

taking into account their audience and the type of web matter they are
doing, it comes down to a couple of choices.  If they are doing public
business or are envolved in government or education here in the u s in any
case, they are subject to pollicy.  If they are doing business of any
kind, it would stand to reason, that the shear numbers of people that
might be attracted to their sites would it were that they were more
readable for all might turn the tide.  In none of these senarios fits, or
if other constraints prevail, there is nothing to move the mountain.
it is in everyone's interest to have information that is given given in a
way which is accessable to all.  Instead of asking what motivates people
to produce accessable sites, we should perhaps make it so appealing to do
so that they can't refuse.
microsoft has some passages which summ this up pretty in their
accessability documents.
Why should accessability be a factor in design?


On Mon, 1 Dec 1997, Scott Luebking wrote:

> Hi,
> A question that comes to mind is what would be motivating people to make
> their web pages accessible.  That might be something to include when researching
> developers.  Another question is how much effort are they willing to
> put into making the web pages accessible?  What priority is there for
> accessibility in the web pages?
> Scott
> 
> > 
> > As part of my research I am intending to contact developers to find out how
> > they would like to learn about accessibility.  It seems to be important to
> > discover whether they would like to read Guidelines and use checklists, or
> > use automatic checkers like Bobby, or attend courses or workshops, or, as
> > Kelly suggests, if they use authoring tools, whether they think these
> > should produce accessible HTML.  Or, indeed, whether they would like a
> > combination of all these things!  In my opinion, if we can find out how
> > people would prefer to be educated, we have a much better chance of
> > succeeding.
> > 
> > It may be that some developers have never thought about access for people
> > with disabilities let alone how, for example, a blind person uses the Web.
> > Therefore developers may also like to learn more about these practicalities
> > in order to put guidelines etc into a more real context.
> > 
> > It is also possible that the person who creates a page does not have any
> > control over some aspects of its design.  I came across an interesting
> > situation recently where a researcher for a large UK company was creating
> > Web pages for his particular project.  The pages contained frames, very
> > small fonts, and clashing text and background colours.  When I asked about
> > this he said that all of these things were imposed on him by the company's
> > webmaster and so my contact had no control over it.  Obviously, there are
> > many different layers here for us to consider.
> > 
> > As I am just beginning this part of my research, I would be happy to hear
> > from anyone who has any interesting ideas about how to go about this.
> > 
> > Chetz
> > 
> > 
> > 
> > 
> > Chetz Colwell
> > Sensory Disabilities Research Unit
> > Department of Psychology
> > University of Hertfordshire
> > Hatfield
> > AL10 9AB
> > Tel: 01707 284630
> > e-mail: c.g.colwell@herts.ac.uk
> > 
> 

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Received on Monday, 1 December 1997 17:16:04 UTC