- From: Charles McCathieNevile <charlesn@sunrise.srl.rmit.edu.au>
- Date: Wed, 21 Jan 1998 10:14:09 +1100 (EST)
- To: Chris Hasser <chasser@immerse.com>
- cc: Mike Burks <mburks952@worldnet.att.net>, Jason White <jasonw@ariel.ucs.unimelb.EDU.AU>, WAI Interest Group <w3c-wai-ig@w3.org>
Chris pointed to one of the major problems. Authoring tools are not really designed with accesibility in mind, and too many website authors simply do not understand the principles of good design. It is NOT harder to maker a site accessible than to make it without caring. It IS harder to fix it afterwards, although (as suggested) often not much harder. An interesting fact I obtained when working as the webmaster for RMIT University, one of Australia's largest (42 000 students): Of All people who viewed our front page, approximately _half_ did not bother viewing the pictures. (Based on a study of the log files. Not perfect but not bad. Around 100 000 hits in the period in question) So it is true that the pressure should go onto those who make authoring tools (especially as most of the biggest are made by w3c member organisations) to get it right. Australian equal opportunity law apparently may be able to be used to force websites to come up to scratch, but it is not really the ideal way to achieve the real goal. Charles McCathieNevile Sunrise Research Laboratory RMIT University
Received on Tuesday, 20 January 1998 18:32:34 UTC