Re: QED & Marshall McLuhan

I would like to clarify something that has been attributed to me in this
thread.

Earlier I wrote:

>I am blind and there's little chance I'll ever independently fly a plane or
>drive a car safely.  I don't think that the web accessibility guidelines
>are intended that I be able to do so say on a web site that simulates
e>ither activity.

I never said or intended that this statement should mean that the practices
of accessible web design should be ignored on such a page.  In fact I
believe quite the opposite.

My point was that even with everything labeled and such and assuming you
could create a web page that effectively simulated the function of piloting
a plane, I doubt someone who's blind would be able to successfully
accomplish this task.

From talking with friends who are pilots it is my understanding that doing
such successfully requires processing visual information, often quite
rapidly and often switching from one visual item to another e.g. looking at
this and that gage and then looking out the window and such.  By the time
you started to accomplish this with speech, the plane would be down and
burning.  In other words in this case it is impossible to eliminate the
impact of blindness on the result of the interaction and I don't think
that's the goal of the accessibility guidelines in such an instance.

Received on Thursday, 10 June 1999 22:41:43 UTC