Interoperability, universally designed web pages and ADA/504

Hi,

I was reviewing Cynthia Waddell's posting.

> Kelly,
> Your comments are well-taken. You will be interested to know that the legal
> interpretation of "effective communication" for access to electronic and
> information technology includes "timeliness of delivery, accuracy of the
> translation and provision in a manner and medium appropriate to the
> significance of the message and the abilities of the individual with the
> disability." 

I think that we might have a couple types of accessibility depending
on whether the web pages are static or dynamically generated.

For web pages which are static, a cross-browser approach,
i.e. interoperability, can be useful in many situations.
However, interoperability may be at odds to universally designed
web pages depending on the definition of "universally designed".
If "universally designed" means something like taking advantage
of as many features as available in order to satisfy the
needs of as many people as possible, then that may not be possible with
interoperability which limits the choices of browser features to use.

For web pages which are dynamically generated, I wonder if it would
be reasonable to expect that the web page be created for
the browser being used (and maybe the screen reader too).
The dynamic web pages might be considered more universally designed
since they could better use the features of the browser being used.
These web pages could better accomodate a person's disability.

Scott

PS  I'm not saying that it should be expected that all web pages
be dynamically generated.


PSS I have a template processor class which can create web pages
dynamically.  It's quite flexible and handles such things as multiple
languages, user selectable formats, data returned from database queries,
browser-specific features, disability access, etc.  I put some
documentation about it at:

    http://members.aol.com/phoenixl/template-processor

Received on Saturday, 30 October 1999 01:51:31 UTC