- From: Kynn Bartlett <kynn-hwg@idyllmtn.com>
- Date: Tue, 26 Oct 1999 15:09:36 -0700
- To: Scott Luebking <phoenixl@netcom.com>
- Cc: W3c-wai-ig@w3.org
At 02:11 PM 10/26/1999 -0700, Scott Luebking wrote: >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? First let's look at removing the disability from the picture and see if there's anything we can learn from that exercise: Suppose that a company provides Internet Explorer to their employees. The company hires a new employee who only uses Lynx and refuses to use Internet Explorer. What should the company do? In this case, it's very clear to me that if the employee _can_ use (is capable of using) Internet Explorer, and just chooses to use Lynx, it's reasonable for the company to require her to use the software they have provided to her for this purpose. She is an employee, and just as an office may choose to use only MS Word for a word-processor, so can they also require that she use only the software provided to her for accessing the Intranet. Applying the same idea to the above situation with a second blind employee, I would say the same thing -- the employee should be required to learn JAWS. The company should pay for all training costs associated with this, of course, as they would if it was just a case of training her to use IE; but it's perfectly reasonable for the company to require that one specific accessibility solution be chosen, as long as that enables the employee to do her job. This isn't Burger King -- in most jobs, you don't necessarily get it done "your way." Someone who prefers Macintoshes may not be able to demand a Mac in a Windows-based office. This is not an accessibility issue. -- Kynn Bartlett <kynn@hwg.org> President, Governing Board Member HTML Writers Guild <URL:http://www.hwg.org> Director, Accessible Web Authoring Resources and Education Center <URL:http://aware.hwg.org/>
Received on Tuesday, 26 October 1999 18:30:37 UTC