- From: William Loughborough <love26@gorge.net>
- Date: Wed, 19 Aug 1998 07:06:26 -0700
- To: "w3c-wai-ig@w3.org" <w3c-wai-ig@w3.org>
Kynn: "Where do rights come from, and who makes the decision, "this is a right"?" WL:: The "slogan" is without any "a" but includes it by implication so that the idea of accessibility being "the right thing" as well as being "a right" is included. The idea of "rights", at least in the U.S. is drilled into most of us humans about when we are infected with the insidious virus called "language" and in general these are taken, guarded, and maintained through the force of arms, i.e. we wage revolutions to secure them and have armed forces of various kinds to assure their application - which seems weird since one of them is to be free of such means! Anyway, there are rights given by Nature (Gaia, God, etc.) that account for our continuing through life: oxygen, water, sunlight and its products, etc. There are rights by language as in "Bill of Rights", Civil Rights, Common Law Rights, and customs. Some come from adjudication and others from power ("possession is nine points..."). The main one we deal with in our context, the right to an accessible World Wide Web is less tenuous than a web but, in certain places, "guaranteed" by such legislative language as found in Title II of the ADA and parts of the Telecommunications Act. The "guarantee" is about like the one given at weddings since a lot more "parting" happens before it is done by death than it is done by decree. The "right to access" is a lot more "intuitive" than the idea that a circle with a slash across it means "no" to whatever the symbol contained in the circle means (which is also a bit less than "intuitive" in the case of arrows, etc.). I mean by that that since we are all in this together, all members of one another, and almost by definition cannot allow sociopathy to prevail, it's clear that "everything, everyone connected" means what Tim Berners-Lee et al say it means. If you speak Spanish at the poker table during a hand in most public games you are asked to stop; if you publish inaccessible materials on the Web you will be ultimately stopped - our task is to clarify "inaccessible" so that the offenders will know they are "speaking Spanish". I am entitled to ramble on this since my signature started it and my creeping senility entitles me to the forbearance of my younger colleagues. -- Love. ACCESSIBILITY IS RIGHT - NOT PRIVILEGE http://dicomp.pair.com
Received on Wednesday, 19 August 1998 10:06:44 UTC