The Tools you Need Today -- another view

Another point of view...

While I dislike spam as much as the next guy, I think we are perhaps being
a little too quick on the criticism trigger and missing what seems to be
something of an opportunity here.  The difference between this and most
other unsolicited advertisements that have made it through to this list is
that this product actually relates to what we are discussing here, namely,
the web.  I would hope we could look at this as an opportunity to reach the
vendor of this  product and educate them on the issues of accessibility and
the benefit to them in relation to the legal requirements that their
customers will face.  On the surface this looks like an interesting and
powerful product but one that could no doubt benefit from some
accessibility-related design considerations.  Considering that it is also
targeting the educational multimedia market, and since no serious players
in this critical market seem to be taking accessibility seriously, we
should take this opportunity to  educate them.  The company in question
also advertises that they design custom GUIs, and if there ever was a
company that could benefit from a little education, this seems like a prime
candidate<grin>.

Hopefully, we haven't scared off these people now, and hopefully we can
open a dialog and start talking about things like authoring guidelines,
XML, SMIL, and the whole range of issues that we all know about and preach
to each other ad nauseum, but don't effectively communicate to the rest of
the world (yet -- forgive me Judy, I know this is coming).

Just my opinion,

Jim

------------------------------
Jim Rebman
University of Colorado, Boulder
College of Engineering and Applied Science
Technology - Enhanced Learning Laboratory
mailto:jrebman@schof.colorado.edu

Received on Sunday, 21 June 1998 17:52:47 UTC