- From: Dave J Woolley <david.woolley@bts.co.uk>
- Date: Thu, 5 Oct 2000 19:28:55 +0100
- To: "'w3c-wai-ig@w3.org'" <w3c-wai-ig@w3.org>
> From: apembert@crosslink.net [SMTP:apembert@crosslink.net] > > It is highly unlikely that many businesses are going to be so foolish > as to believe they will increase their business by getting rid of > graphics. Further, it is arguments such as this that are severely [DJW:] It's very doubtful that they will believe it, although I think they might be surprised. > impeding the acceptance and implementation of web accessibility. There [DJW:] Quite true. Insisting on commercially unrealistic levels of accessibility will be counter productive. The current argument is whether priority 1 or priority 2 is intended to represent a commercially acceptable level. > A 10 second download does not necessarily mean light graphics, it > means a speedy connection. Users who are too impatient to wait for a > download are better served by faster connection capabilities, not by [DJW:] That costs money. Large amounts of money in some parts of the world. Applying a financial penalty tends to discriminate against those outside the USA and those unable to get well paid work, often including the physically disabled (note I see accessibility as being not just about disablement). It does select for readers more likely to pay for products, so there's no commercial incentive to support people who can't afford fast links. Qualifying leads is a desirable commercial feature, but not necessarily a good one for public policy. Incidentally, the link here is 128K. > taking away the bread and butter from users who depend on the graphics > to understand the conteent of a page. > [DJW:] I am having difficulty thinking of any site where casual graphics helped me and can think of many sites where I had to play "hunt the hyperlink". > Continuing to argue against graphics, multi-media, and other > advantages of the web over print, is to argue against the likely > acceptance of accessibility. It's time to be realistic. [DJW:] I'd agree that commercial organisations will see anything that forces them to abandon graphics in order to get an accessihilitity rating as being a significant imposition on them. Once one accepts this, and if one also accepts that accessibility of commercial web sites is a valid public policy aim, one either has to find ways of improving accessibility at no cost to the authors and without affecting their use of multimedia, or one forces them. I don't see any realistic proposals for the former and I see an increasing amount of the latter. (Tools that allow motivated authors to improve accessibility don't count, as the motivation isn't there.) I think that WCAG priority 1 goes further than most commecial organisations would want to go, but is not commecially too unrealistic. I think that priority 2 requires some real compromises. There are many other areas where market forces and public policy conflict. -- --------------------------- DISCLAIMER --------------------------------- Any views expressed in this message are those of the individual sender, except where the sender specifically states them to be the views of BTS.
Received on Thursday, 5 October 2000 14:29:00 UTC