- From: Kynn Bartlett <kynn-hwg@idyllmtn.com>
- Date: Tue, 26 Oct 1999 16:22:28 -0700
- To: "Gregory J. Rosmaita" <unagi69@concentric.net>
- Cc: WAI Interest Group Emailing List <w3c-wai-ig@w3.org>
At 07:21 PM 10/26/1999 -0400, Gregory J. Rosmaita wrote: >one cannot just sit down and quote learn JAWS unquote and MSIE in one fell >swoop and expect to be proficient with both... >take the blinders off, kynn -- or, rather, put them on... fire up JAWS >(after, of course, unplugging your monitor and mouse) and quote see unquote how >far you get (although you have an unfair advantage in that you are already >proficient using MSIE, even though i know that it is not your first browser of >choice) Neither can one simply sit down and easily learn a lot of other software. In general, there's a learning curve associated with each piece of software, and some are harder to learn and some are easier to learn. That's beside the point, though -- if your company says "learn this software", you don't say "no, I don't want to learn it, I prefer this other software that you haven't provided to me and you don't support and which doesn't function on your network"; you say, "Okay, I'll learn it." I prefer to use a unix machine. If I get a job using a mac, I'll learn to use the mac; I can't just require that they provide me with a unix machine. >no, real life isn't burger king, and you can't always have it your way, but >neither is the hypothetical blind employee a slab of frozen meat by-products, >to be slapped down upon a one-size-fits-all flame broiler... Nor is the hypothetical NON-blind employee. But it's a fact of life that the employer more times than not will dictate the software, especially when you are talking about access to company-wide resources such as an Intranet. Your arguments are valid -- but they're equally valid when we remove the disability issue entirely from the discussion. This means that it's an issue that does _not_ involve accessibility, but rather involves choice of software in an enterprise-wide corporate system. Sure, I'd love it if I could choose to use Unix, my co-worker could choose to use a Mac, and our third co-worker could use Windows 98. But in the real world, we don't get that choice. Likewise, as long as the company provides _a_ way for each person who works there, who has a disability, to be able to access the Intranet, I don't think they should be obligated to support _ALL_ ways to access the Intranet. (Out of curiousity, does the difference between Intranet and Internet come across clearly on speech synths? I know sometimes in normal discussion I can mishear the two terms when it's being discussed.) -- 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 19:31:06 UTC