- From: Kynn Bartlett <kynn-edapta@idyllmtn.com>
- Date: Fri, 25 Aug 2000 15:52:50 -0700
- To: Ian Jacobs <ij@w3.org>
- Cc: "Bailey, Bruce" <Bruce_Bailey@ed.gov>, "'w3c-wai-ig@w3.org'" <w3c-wai-ig@w3.org>
At 04:00 PM 8/25/2000 , Ian Jacobs wrote: >Kynn Bartlett wrote: > > As an aside, some of you might be thinking, "Woah, hold on, > > pardner! What sort of patronizing decisions are you making > > here, that you know best about what's important and what's > > not, that you make these decisions for someone else?" >I feel very strongly the opposite of that "might be thinking": >the author is the sole arbiter of what the author thinks >is important. And the author designs pages based on what >is important to the author. The author should consider >usability to be important. I don't think we disagree anywhere on that. :) However, the attitude of "I'll decide what's best for you" isn't really intrinsic to the web way of thinking, and often that attitude (if not this particular practice here) can lead to problems, such as "well, blind people don't NEED that information." Obviously we are dealing with subtleties and shades of gray and not black-and-white, and a happy medium between the choice of the author and the needs of the audience has to be struck and any responsible author (such as Ian) is already thinking along such lines. :) -- Kynn Bartlett <kynn@idyllmtn.com> http://kynn.com/ Director of Accessibility, Edapta http://www.edapta.com/ Chief Technologist, Idyll Mountain Internet http://www.idyllmtn.com/ AWARE Center Director http://www.awarecenter.org/ Vote for Liz for N. Am. ICANN Nominee! http://www.khyri.com/icann/
Received on Friday, 25 August 2000 19:05:25 UTC