- From: Charles McCathieNevile <charlesn@sunrise.srl.rmit.edu.au>
- Date: Tue, 20 Jan 1998 17:40:44 +1100 (EST)
- To: Mike Burks <mburks952@worldnet.att.net>
- cc: Jason White <jasonw@ariel.ucs.unimelb.EDU.AU>, WAI Interest Group <w3c-wai-ig@w3.org>
This cuts to the heart of accessibility. A poorly designed graphics-based website is automatically censored for a blind person, who cannot see the graphics. I am (in principle) as strongly opposed to this kind of censorship by laziness as I am to censorship by direct restriction. Unfrtunately I think the worst (non-accesibility related) case for PICS offers both. Providing information about a site, and using that information to select which site to view, is a standard procedure - it is directly analagous to the production of academic journals, where all things are not regarded as equal. The question lies in where material can be published, and whether it can be at all available. In this sense, the use of a PICS system, as Jason suggested, may provide the means for tyranny to enforce accessible design on the web, rather than wait for them to do it voluntarily. Nothing is without pitfalls - democracy as we usually understand it is really only the tyranny of the masses after all. Charles McCathieNevile
Received on Tuesday, 20 January 1998 01:56:20 UTC