education

I think another issue is the tremendous loss of potential customers through 
extensive use of the latest and greatest.  As a designer with all the new 
toys it is easy to forget that many people on the web are using old 
equipment.  There is a significant commercial interest in targeting 
accessible sites / content.  If sites are made accessible to the disabled 
then the sites are necessarily accessible to those who are not using T3 
connections with 21 inch color monitors.  I think this is not often 
realized.  Increased market penetration is hard to argue against.

Design not tools are the only important target.  However, by creating tools 
that make accessible code designers can be forced to produce more 
accessible code.  I think those of us who still hand code their HTML are a 
dying breed of dinosaur.  The GUI / WYSIWYG design tools will likely see to 
that.

Getting people to think through what they are doing is important thing. 
 However, getting people to use common sense design is an uphill battle. 
 Education is the key.  A well designed flyer sent to design houses might 
be a worth while endeavor along with an advertising campaign to spread the 
word.  Especially relevant would be a note to all federal agencies pointing 
out violation of the ADA ruling by the U.S. Department of Justice by 
presenting non-accessible web sites.

As to the content vs. presentation issue it is okay to have sites with no 
content.  Like television, radio and books there will always be 
content-free sites.  What is important is that anyone can access and see 
that a site is a ridiculous waste of time.

-Jamie

Received on Wednesday, 12 August 1998 14:49:56 UTC