Re: Commercial Realities and Accessibility (was: Are Small Text buttons level 2 compliant)

Just to add my 5 cents worth, whilst I believe that small text and radio 
buttons do represent a barrier for visually and mobility impaired 
individuals, color trends on the web are leaning towards a potential bigger 
barrier. Ad agencies started this with retro 60's off and dirty colors. 
i.e. dirty orange, off pink, yellow with a touch of black. Also delicate 
variations of pastel shades are cropping up all over the place. A low 
vision user I know is driven apoplectic when links effectively disappear 
off the page when they change color from a nice deep blue to delicate shade 
of pastel blue especially on a pastel background. Excuse my ignorance here, 
but does Bobby take that into consideration?

William, I love some of your comments, very valuable, but for us Pooh Bears 
please can you explain in words of one syllable. I have lost the plot here.

That's me, Bro. Naive. However, the bill hasn't been presented yet for the 
current transgressions. The legal advice that Dow and Philip Morris had in 
the 30s came back to haunt them when the payouts almost bankrupted the 
former and are a huge nudge on the latter. IBM will experience similar 
problems if they continue failing to heed that "naive" signature when such 
things as the Bruce Maguire matter evolve further. Programmers are cheaper 
than lawyers and the SOCOG spent more on legal "expertise" in 
cross-examining Jutta than would have been spent making the Olympics site 
accessible.
The "business case" is not a simplistic "last 20%" of the potential 
clients' issue. The probability of an "accessibility impact study" similar 
to the "environmental impact study" that was almost surely the result of a 
book by Rachel Carson about 60 years ago is very real and to pretend that 
there is some "market force" that isn't made entirely possible only because 
of "rule of law" issues is what's really "naive".

Or where you just a touch miffed when you wrote that?

By the way I would love to meet you all in Bristol but my budget does not 
extend to the £81 a night the Post House is charging. (not if I wish to 
keep my servers and dial up operational anyway) Mind you it is only a 
couple of hours away.......

Paul Davis.
www.ten-20.com The UK portal site for disabled people and associated 
professionals.

Received on Wednesday, 27 September 2000 06:09:01 UTC