Re: nomenclature

hmmm, a post of mine didn't make it to the list but you said it better.
On
Tue, 1 Dec 1998, Kynn Bartlett wrote:

_At 07:41 a.m. 12/01/98 -0800, William Loughborough wrote:
_>Although I'm not much of one for being concerned about Political
_>Correctness or even what things are called it seems to me that we might
_>substitute "Inclusive Design" for the rather vague "universal design"
_>since it says something about what we're really talking about and
_>promotes the central notion of our "aboutness".  Inclusion is furthered
_>by inclusive design, etc.
_
_At risk of starting a semantics/"politically correct" debate, I
_don't like the idea of "inclusive design" because the connotations
_of "inclusive" seem to imply an active* "outreach" to a group of
_people* who have special needs* in order to be included.
_
_I marked with a * the items that I think are questionable.  While I
_do believe that inclusive/universal design is important for granting
_access to our friends with various disabilities, I don't feel that
_it's necessary to emphasize these as "extra work you have to do to
_provide for the blind and handicapped", which is how many people
_will interpret what's said above.
_
_I don't think you need to _actively_ "reach out and include" people
_as part of universal design; the strength of the term universal
_design (or a similar concept) is that the web pages can be used
_by anyone or anything, not just that they're "including" some 
_minority group.  Sad to say, there is a backlash against "inclusion",
_at least in many parts of the US -- witness Mr. Raspberry's 
_mean-spirited little tirade in the Washington Post.  If it smacks
_of "political correctness", many people will have knee-jerk
_reactions against even simple common sense suggestions, let alone
_anything that truly is just.
_
_For these reasons I feel we get farther by emphasizing that the
_benefits of "universal design" grant "inclusion" to whatever people
_may be lacking it, PLUS it makes it easier for non-standard high-
_tech browsers to use the web, PLUS it makes it easier for search
_engines and other intelligent sifters to parse your site, PLUS
_blah blah blah.  Sell it all as a package, and we're much more
_likely to get at least ONE point that speaks to the listener.
_
_In short, people suck, and most don't care about being "inclusive",
_so if we put all our eggs in a basket with that label, we'll be
_screwed.
_
_--
_Kynn Bartlett  <kynn@idyllmtn.com>             http://www.idyllmtn.com/~kynn/
_Chief Technologist & Co-Owner, Idyll Mountain Internet; Fullerton, California
_Enroll now for web accessibility with HTML 4.0!   http://www.hwg.org/classes/
_The voice of the future?   http://www.hwg.org/opcenter/w3c/voicebrowsers.html
_

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Received on Tuesday, 1 December 1998 21:42:02 UTC