- From: Timothy Stephen Springer <timsp@ssbtechnologies.com>
- Date: Thu, 5 Oct 2000 11:49:13 -0700
- To: "Dave J Woolley" <david.woolley@bts.co.uk>, <w3c-wai-ig@w3.org>
DJW: > PDAs do reflect big spenders, so would be a priority > for a place in the top 80%. On the other hand, they > are so different from desktops that someone targetting > them would probably produce an alternative page, which > would increase the cost of supporting them and reduce > their priority. They are also much in a minority. > > People with 14.4K modems will be put in a similar class > to those with text only browsers. They are a small minority, > and there is circumstancial evidence that they are not > spending on technology goods. I think they would be > classed as people to ignore when designing the site. I would tend to disagree. The pda in this case probably is meant to refer to the wider phenomenon of access via mobile (WAP) devices. As is documented by the W3C in the Mobile Access document. (http://www.w3.org/TR/NOTE-html40-mobile/) The primary idea communicated there is that the problems addressed by the accessibility guidelines have a direct application to content translation for wireless devices. While I concur that there will be specific WAP targeted sites (ie. sites designed in native WAP) I have to believe that the vast majority of content delivered to mobile devices will be formatted into WML by a wireless ASP/portal. As such a business that wants it's content to be accessible to wireless devices in the future has a compelling reason to buy into accessibility now. The experience via 14.4 modems is, in my mind, a subset of the mobile usage cases (which currently access content at an average of 9.6 kbps!). Current wireless devices used for information access (predominately WAP) have large bandwidth constraints. To this end the experience of a 14.4 modem user does strongly reflect that of a mobile user. My 2 cents. Tim Springer ----Data--- http://www.thestandard.com/research/metrics/display/0,2799,15258,00.html People with WAP phones (2005): 484 Million People with real phones (2005): 1.3 Billion
Received on Thursday, 5 October 2000 14:51:59 UTC