Re: Define Accessibility!

At 11:59 AM 6/11/1999 , Anne Pemberton wrote:
>"1. Easy to approach, reach, enter, speak with, or use. 2. able to be used,
>entered, or reached. 3. obtainable, attainable (accessible evidence). 4.
>Readily understandable. 5. open to the influence of (accessible to bribary)."

>Definition #4 is relevent to this discussion, and, at least in this
>dictionary, the meaning of accessibility clearly includes understanding. 

You had to go to the 4th definition in order to find something
that supports your equation of "accessibility" and "understandability"
though.  Note that the first one doesn't speak of understanding, just
of ease of _access_.  The second says _able_ to be used, not a
guarantee of understanding.  The third says "obtainable" which does
_not_ imply understanding.

Finally in the fourth definition, you hit yours; then you come to
one that says web content must be bribable?  If you want to play this
dictionary game, we can, but are you really calling for web sites to
be open to corruption?

My definition:  A web site is accessible if the information contained
in the content is not denied to any user.  This is separate from
the actual _understanding_, meaning that a web site could be
perfectly _accessible_ to me but not _understandable_ by me, and that's
just fine.

--
Kynn Bartlett                                    mailto:kynn@hwg.org
President, HTML Writers Guild                    http://www.hwg.org/
AWARE Center Director                          http://aware.hwg.org/

Received on Friday, 11 June 1999 15:07:18 UTC