- From: Charles McCathieNevile <charles@w3.org>
- Date: Wed, 27 Oct 1999 12:37:39 -0400 (EDT)
- To: Scott Luebking <phoenixl@netcom.com>
- cc: poehlman@clark.net, sweetent@home.com, unagi69@concentric.net, w3c-wai-ig@w3.org
If the pop-up were an ordinary link to an explanation of how this site works, it would be interoperable back to the CERN line-mode browser (which actually came after the graphical one that Tim started with, but...) Which is why some sites do explain how they work. Using something interoperable like a normal hypertext link. People like Jonathan Chetwynd have been reminding us that interactivity is very important to making content accessible to some people. My point is to recognise that interactivity is good for some people, and can be bad for others - the challenge is to reconcile the two. It's not a very amazing point, and other people have made it better. Charles McCN On Wed, 27 Oct 1999, Scott Luebking wrote: Hi, Charles I'm not quite sure what your point is. Issues of interaction via web technology will be coming more to the forefront as recognition of the benefits becomes more common. People like interaction. They learn better. It's more interesting and fun. I haven't heard of people doing much research on how interaction on web pages can improve accessibility. As I've been watching blind people using web pages, a common problem I've seen is getting a sense of context of the page. (It's not that dissimilar to what a blind person has to do when moving into a new office or bedroom.) What would be helpful in web page interaction for long distance learning (or other situations) is having a key that the blind person hits and a box pops up giving a quick explanation of the purpose of the page in the course along with any special aspects about the page. (Current software technology has a hard time recognizing purposes of pages.) Again, this technique falls outside of interoperability, but sure would make it easier for blind users. Scott PS If interoperability is such an important issue, why doesn't W3C just say all browsers should work the same? (There would be the nagging real world business issues of product differentiation and browser improvement.) > I agree that students would prefer interaction to text. The flip side is that > students will vastly prefer text to not being able to use essential or > important course materials. > > Charles --Charles McCathieNevile mailto:charles@w3.org phone: +1 617 258 0992 http://www.w3.org/People/Charles W3C Web Accessibility Initiative http://www.w3.org/WAI MIT/LCS - 545 Technology sq., Cambridge MA, 02139, USA
Received on Wednesday, 27 October 1999 12:38:01 UTC