Re: a very small group vs everyone else

In response to Christ Kreussling's remarks included at the end of this
message.

I have not seen a viable proposal to provide the majority of people
using the Internet and hosting their own site with the skills to become
able to write the code manually to provide the type of accessibility
being advocated?

As a educational technologist develop training materials for teachers
who want to use computer technology, but do not need to know how to
write program code. 

My concept is to provide learners with fully functioning templates, in
form of appropriate software files, that gets them up and running
without spending lots of time learning to perform tasks that they might
use once in six months. By providing them with a comprehensive "Job
Aids" workbook, they can look up the desired task and following the
numbered steps. 

It is important to note that a great many people are only using the
computer as a small part of their school or work day. They want the
computer to assist them in creating great looking documents without
devoting the greater part of their non sleeping hours in front of a
computer.

The market for personal computers took off with the creation of the
graphic user interface and the cooperative compliance for creating
accessible Internet sites will also when the html authoring applications
facilitate the desired tasks.

Writing html manually is like operating a DOS computer. It may satisfy
the needs of a few people, but it will not meet the needs of the
majority of people with home computers. There will be a competitive
advantage to the first html author application that is equipped with
Internet assess tools. Sounds like something a small startup company
could do when the major corporations
sit on their hands.

Claude Sweet


> Unfortunately, given the state of authoring tools today, authors/producers who are concerned with the accessibility of their efforts must also be concerned with the code - HTML, CSS, and so on - which underlies their "product". My experience with every visual/graphical/pseudo-WYSIWYG authoring tool I've tried to date (I have no experience with Adobe PageMill) is that none support the full range of accessibility (uh, "universal design" [g]) features available. Most, for example, will happily, plug in a useless default ALT text for an image without prompting the author that they must supply meaningful text.
> 
> <author>Chris Kreussling</author>

Received on Tuesday, 1 December 1998 17:59:03 UTC