- From: Kynn Bartlett <kynn-edapta@idyllmtn.com>
- Date: Mon, 09 Apr 2001 17:06:11 -0700
- To: <jim@jimthatcher.com>
- Cc: "Frank Gaine" <fgaine@frontend.ie>, <w3c-wai-ig@w3.org>
At 04:45 PM 4/9/2001 , Jim Thatcher wrote: >You say that skip navigation links are <quote> more of a convenience issue >rather than a barrier to access. <endquote> I suggest you get the trial of >home page reader (www.ibm.com/able/hpr) and try listening to say, CNN.com, >without using their skip navigation link. Here's a physical-world analogy. I went to park today at my homeowner's association clubhouse, to check if the pool is now heated. (It's rainy and wet so not swimming weather at all, but I wanted to see if they'd turned on the heaters yet.) Nobody was there, so the parking lot was empty. I wanted to take the best parking place available, but they were all lined with blue lines -- handicapped. So I had to walk a little further. This got me thinking. The "disabled" parking places are there, right by the entrance to the building. This is good and right. If they were across a busy parking lot -- say, on the far side of a shopping center's large parking area -- then you'd have a problem. They would _exist_ and people could _use them_, but they couldn't be used _well_ and this would make it very difficult for some people. The web analogy is site which are "accessible" but not "usable" by people with disabilities. In other words, a site like even the Idyll Mountain Internet web site (http://www.idyllmtn.com/) or my own personal web site. All of the markup required for access is _there_ -- you can navigate the site by keyboard or voice, for example -- but you still have to page through a heck of a lot of links in order to get to what you want to get to. This is the same as if we had disabled parking places on the far side of lot -- sure, it's _there_, but can you use it easily? This is why compromise solutions such as "skip links" and long-term solutions such as Edapta (er..."Reef EveryWare" I am paid to say) are necessary, in order to strive for the highest usability possible. If you don't do that, you've just made it "accessible" but you've trapped your users across the "virtual parking lot" and it's a pain in the ass for them to get into the building. --Kynn Kynn Bartlett <kynn@reef.com> Technical Developer Liaison Reef North America Tel +1 949-567-7006 ________________________________________ ACCESSIBILITY IS DYNAMIC. TAKE CONTROL. ________________________________________ http://www.reef.com
Received on Monday, 9 April 2001 20:08:16 UTC