Re: How to convince businesses to be accessible...

One problem is that although I use lynx I actually prefer to get the images
included in the source - every so often I decide to look at one, which is
very trivial.

The basic difficulty is that what browser a user has is not a good guide to
what are the preferences and needs of the user - that needs to be answered by
hte users themselves. W3C is working on a system called CC/PP (that's easier
to remember than the real name) designed to allow this kind of information to
be sent by the browser to the server. And there are in fact a lot of people
using these kinds of approaches. The simplest version is to provide a link to
a text-only version of a page (This is helpful to some users but not by
itself a solution), and there are many other methods used. The trick is to
get the right information about the user and what they want, and that is not
easy.

Cheers

Charles McCN

On Fri, 6 Oct 2000, Ryan Eby wrote:

  A friend of mine did this on his site with ASP (as a learning tool - his
  site is not commercial). He wrote all his content in XML pages and then used
  a ASP page to check the HTTP header to find the browser version and then
  apply a different XSL stylesheet depending on the browser. It was then sent
  off to the browser as HTML. If the browser was one that didn't support
  images than he used a stylesheet that left out the images and HTML that
  might have been a hindrance. It may seem like a lot of work but it really
  wasn't. He only created the content once and about a half dozen stylesheets.
  And the ASP code he wrote once and then copy and pasted it for the other
  pages changes the content variable to point to the proper file. It worked
  quite well as far as I could see (on lynx, NS, and IE). I'd give you the
  link but he is running it locally on his machine now because of lack of
  extra funds for hosting). Are there any problems with this approach that I
  am missing.
  _____________________________
  Ryan Eby
  ----- Original Message -----
  From: "Reidy Brown" <rbrown@blackboard.com>
  To: <w3c-wai-ig@w3.org>
  Sent: Thursday, October 05, 2000 8:24 PM
  Subject: RE: How to convince businesses to be accessible...
  
  
  > I'm a little surprised that no one (especially Kynn) has talked about
  using
  > server-side logic to create customized pages based on user preferences.
  It's
  > true that many small business web sites are static, but a growing number
  of
  > commercial sites use Cold Fusion, ASP, JSP, cgi,php or other server side
  > technology. It's not a trivial matter, certainly, but it is possible to
  set
  > up the site to generate no-image, low-bandwidth, and high-bandwith pages
  on
  > demand. With a little additional thought, you can set the system to handle
  > client-side logic (javascript) where possible or desired (and many people
  > _do_ want this) and server-side logic where necessary.
  >
  > Admittedly, it's not a quick-fix solution, but it is a viable option for
  > well-engineered web sites. And for those that don't have the capability
  > in-house, something like Edapta is an up-and-coming solution. I'm not
  > familiar enough with Edapta's functionality, but I suspect that this is
  the
  > sort of thing it's designed to do for existing sites.
  >
  > Reidy
  >
  > -------------------------------------------
  > Reidy Brown
  > Accessibility Coordinator/
  > Software Engineer
  > Blackboard, Inc.
  > -------------------------------------------
  >
  >
  >
  > -----Original Message-----
  > From: David Poehlman [mailto:poehlman@clark.net]
  > Sent: Thursday, October 05, 2000 6:24 PM
  > To: Anne Pemberton
  > Cc: Dave J Woolley; w3c-wai-ig@w3.org
  > Subject: Re: How to convince businesses to be accessible...
  >
  >
  > I think we need to carefully define accessability.  it is no more just a
  > question of who need what to access in terms of disability.  it is fast
  > becoming what will the software and hardware will bear and I am here to
  > tell you that that will decrease drastically over time.  graphics should
  > get out of the way of information and lower costs for the connection
  > mean more buying power for those businesses trying to sell to us.
  > --
  > Hands-On Technolog(eye)s
  > ftp://poehlman.clark.net
  > http://poehlman.clark.net
  > mailto:poehlman@clark.net
  > voice 301-949-7599
  > end sig.
  >
  

-- 
Charles McCathieNevile    mailto:charles@w3.org    phone: +61 (0) 409 134 136
W3C Web Accessibility Initiative                      http://www.w3.org/WAI
Location: I-cubed, 110 Victoria Street, Carlton VIC 3053, Australia
September - November 2000: 
W3C INRIA, 2004 Route des Lucioles, BP 93, 06902 Sophia Antipolis Cedex, France

Received on Tuesday, 10 October 2000 12:50:16 UTC