Seamless Accessibility (was Re: your mail)

At 11:54 AM 21/05/98 +1000, Charles McCathieNevile wrote:
>If seamless accessibility means presenting different material to 
>different audiences, each audience not knowing what the other is getting, 
>then I am not at all in favour of it.

LQ::  That's okay, because seamless accessibility doesn't mean that.  With
seamless accessibility, everyone gets the same content.  It's just that
users get content presented optimally for their browsing environment rather
than a description of how that content might be presented in some foreign
browsing environment.

CMN::
>I am, like I suspect most people here, in favour of solutions to 
>accessibilty problems which do not rely on the 'get a life - download 
>hotbrowser version 567 for the BBC Micro to see this website' approach.

LQ::  Exactly.  When we describe how a page looks visually to the
non-visual user, we're simply saying "Get a life--download eyes now" in a
nicer way.  D-links are obtrusive because they tell the non-visual user
that he or she is viewing a visual page.  For this reason, D-links should
never be automatically rendered all the time; they should only be rendered
when the user requests more information on how the page looks visually (as
with the "*" key command in Lynx).

>On Mon, 4 May 1998, Liam Quinn wrote:
>> >
>> ><OBJECT DATA="logo.gif" TYPE="image/gif" TITLE="XYZ Company logo">
>> >  XYZ Company <A HREF="logo.html" TITLE="Logo description">logo 
>> >description</A>
>> ></OBJECT>
>> 
>> LQ::  Sure, but what about my last sentence:
>> 
>> >> When
>> >> we start mixing an object's description and replacement (as has long
been
>> >> done with IMG's ALT attribute), we make it difficult for user agents to
>> >> render content without the seams from a visual Web becoming a
distraction.
>> 
>> LQ::  I won't use long descriptions if it means that seamless accessibility
>> becomes impossible.  (This is why I don't use D-links.)

-- 
Liam Quinn
Web Design Group            Enhanced Designs, Web Site Development
http://www.htmlhelp.com/    http://enhanced-designs.com/

Received on Thursday, 21 May 1998 07:45:49 UTC