- From: Gregg Vanderheiden <po@trace.wisc.edu>
- Date: Sun, 3 Jan 1999 22:30:47 -0600
- To: <uaccess-l@trace.wisc.edu>, "'IG - WAI Interest Group List'" <w3c-wai-ig@w3.org>
Good comments. Couple of things to remember or think about 1) it is not only unethical, it is illegal if you have a commercial site. (see ADA ruling) 2) I think you misunderstand some of the comments about "the broader benefits of accessible sites". Although some people may oversell it, most people are just pointing out that the same things that make a site more accessible, also make it more usable by some people who do not have disabilities as well as some technologies (which actually do have disabilities in a way). These include people using mobile technologies, small screens (as on PDAs etc) and voice technologies (phones). It also makes them more accessible to indexing engines and the emerging intelligent agent software (both of which can neither see nor hear today - and therefore can only access the text content of a site). The point is that these are accompanying benefits. Sometimes small and sometime large enough that they will (for business reasons) drive a company to do things they may not be driven to by their conscience. (indexing for example). Even where they are not big enough to cause implementation for business reasons, it is always nice to have additional motivations to go along with the ethical ones. Don't you agree? Gregg PS I think that phone access to web sites (by people who are not used to audio access) will actually require that the sites be designed specifically for that type of access. Site will need to develop visual and audio/phone access interfaces that are quite different. It will be interesting to see how this develops. Happy new year everyone. G -- ------------------------------ Gregg C Vanderheiden Ph.D. Professor - Human Factors Dept of Ind. Engr. - U of Wis. Director - Trace R & D Center Gv@trace.wisc.edu, http://trace.wisc.edu/ FAX 608/262-8848 For a list of our listserves send "lists" to listproc@trace.wisc.edu
Received on Sunday, 3 January 1999 23:33:23 UTC