RE: Accessibility Article on Fox News Online Today

I agree that better tools for the government arena will likely mean better
tools for other areas.
A minor point, the GSA page you mentioned (http://gsa.gov/ftsintro_text.htm)
seems fine to me.  It has alt tags and PWWebSpeak reads it fine as far as I
can tell.

-Jamie Fox

-----Original Message-----
From:	w3c-wai-ig-request@w3.org [mailto:w3c-wai-ig-request@w3.org] On Behalf
Of Chris Kreussling
Sent:	Monday, November 23, 1998 2:57 PM
To:	w3c-wai-ig@w3.org
Subject:	Re: Accessibility Article on Fox News Online Today

>>> <w3c-wai-ig@w3.org> 11/20 8:29 AM >>>
...
For the most part, text is portrayed in one of two ways on a Web page:
inside a graphic or in the page's HTML, the language a browser reads to
create the page. Screen-reading programs such as Winvision, Windoweyes and
JAWS read aloud the text encoded in a Web site's HTML.

But when the software gets to an unidentified graphic, it will simply say
"image" and move on to the next bit of text. Because text is increasingly
rendered in image format instead of in HTML, this often results in key
information being bypassed.
...
The federal government seems to be keeping this audience in mind.

Doug Wakefield of the government's Office of Technical and Information
Services, who is blind, said his office is currently working on a set of
standards due out next year that will mandate that government Web sites be
accessible, something which Wakefield said could have a sweeping, if
indirect, effect on the private sector.

"Just remember, the government is an awful big customer," he said. If
industry makes products available to the government that allow for
accessible Web designing, he added, "they're not going to sell it just to
the government, it becomes available for anybody."
<<<

And guess what the GSA's Web site looks like? Yup: Blocks of text rendered
as a single image with no ALT text, even on the "text-only" pages! See
http://gsa.gov/ftsintro_text.htm for an example.


<author>Chris Kreussling</author>
<disclaimer>The views expressed are those of the author and do not
necessarily reflect the position of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York or
the Federal Reserve System.</disclaimer>

Received on Monday, 23 November 1998 15:30:40 UTC