RE: single browser intranets

Hi Scott,

Is there info available on your web based system to teach students chemistry?

Len

At 02:11 PM 10/26/99 -0700, Scott Luebking wrote:
>Hi,
>
>Suppose that a company buys JAWS for one blind employee who works
>well on the intranet with it.  The company hires a second blind employee
>who only uses lynx and refuses to use JAWS.  Is the intranet
>accessible or not?
>
>Scott
>
>PS  I've been working on a web-based system using sound navigation to
>help teach blind chemistry students about different chemical models.  It
>works with IE4/5 and JAWS, but relies on IE 4/5 features.  Is it
>accessible or not?
>
>
>PPS  This does put both companies and universities in an awkward
>position.  How can they plan, allocate resources, etc, if they
>don't know what is accessible and what is not?
>
>
>> At 10:21 AM 10/26/1999 -0700, Waddell, Cynthia wrote:
>> >On the other hand, if a company does not address accessibility in their
>> >intranet environment, they cannot deny employment to a person with a
>> >disability simply because the company did not think ahead and design for
>> >accessibility.  
>> 
>> Yes, this is the accessibility issue.  However, designing for and
>> supporting one browser _on the intranet_ only means that when they
>> hire their new blind employee, they need to make sure that they have
>> the right assistive software (read: they need to buy JAWS or IBM
>> Home Page Reader) and that it works with their intranet application
>> (read: they need to test and possibly make minor changes to the
>> programs).
>> 
>> It doesn't mean that they need to, in advance, provide support for
>> all possible types of browsers accessing their intranet.  That's a
>> requirement for internet websites, and it also makes sense for
>> extranets, but for intranets, you are assumed to have a greater
>> ability to control what is used there, and so you can increase the
>> functionality and decrease the cost of application development
>> by designing _only_ for IE 5.0 or something.
>> 
>> Again, in an Intranet, it _is_ possible to create an accessible
>> application that can only be used with IE 5.0 +/- JAWS.
>
>
>
-------
Leonard R. Kasday, Ph.D.
Institute on Disabilities/UAP, and
Department of Electrical Engineering
Temple University

Ritter Hall Annex, Room 423, Philadelphia, PA 19122
kasday@acm.org        
(215) 204-2247 (voice)
(800) 750-7428 (TTY)

Received on Tuesday, 26 October 1999 17:23:13 UTC