- From: Charles McCathieNevile <charles@w3.org>
- Date: Sun, 17 Dec 2000 17:55:18 -0500 (EST)
- To: Graham Oliver <graham_oliver@yahoo.com>
- cc: <w3c-wai-ig@w3.org>
Graham, This expresses one of the key issues. In fact, there are a number of users with disabilities who are using various types of "mainstream" browsers too. One of the important questions is "what browsers do people need to use?" and of course, "why?". For example some upgrades change a browser completely or in a way that has a negative impact on accesssibility. Equally, in an institutional setting (including any large company) there may be policy constraints preventing upgrades. There is an ongoing discussion of this topic in the Guidelines group, but for now I the approach is to document, along with rquirements and techniques, what technologies are needed for a particular technique to be of value. CHeers Charles On Sun, 17 Dec 2000, Graham Oliver wrote: Hi Some of the recent posting have detailed the 'conflict' between supporting older mainstream browsers (versions 3 and earlier of Navigator and Explorer) and implementing the WAI guidelines. For me, there has been one key concept that has been missing in this debate and that is 'choice'. For a non-disabled person to upgrade from a version 3 browser to a more current version is a matter of choice, being disabled is not. What this means to me, is that it makes more sense to focus on the development and testing of web sites that work well for the non-disabled in versions 4 and upwards of the mainstream browsers. This gives the following 2 key benefits:- 1. It allows closer adherence to the WAI guidelines. 2. It frees up more resources to focus on development and testing, using user-agents for the disabled. It is arguably more important to support older versions of disabled user-agents, given the substantial cost of upgrading some of these products. I would just like to add how much I value reading the postings to this list. Regards Graham Oliver __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Yahoo! Shopping - Thousands of Stores. Millions of Products. http://shopping.yahoo.com/ -- 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 Sunday, 17 December 2000 17:57:49 UTC