RE: Accessibility - A perfect solution?

At 09:31 AM 1/24/2001 , Anthony Quinn wrote:
>Edapta sounds interesting and useful. Where can I find out more?

Right now, the old Edapta site is down as part of our integration
with Reef; you get redirected to the Reef corporate site.  And at
Reef we are still defining how our product will fit into the Reef
framework for upcoming releases -- so at the moment there is no
official source of info on edaptative products. :/

>I had
>always thought that even though you can identify, to some degree, the type
>of browser that someone is using, it is impossible to determine if they are
>using an assistive technology such as a screen reader and that it would
>therefore be impossible to serve up different interfaces to suit.

At this point, yes.  My hope is that in the next few years, we will
see the ability of user agents to self-identify themselves and the
environment in which they operate, based on CC/PP.  In fact, it's
more than a hope; I am absolutely -certain- that this key piece of
Internet technology -will- be developed.  It -has- to be, for the
continued survival and growth of the Web beyond, say, 2004.

>Am I mistaken and if so, is there somewhere I can find out what the
>technique for doing this is?

You can find out about CC/PP -- and if you're a W3C member, get
involved with the project -- by going to http://www.w3.org/Mobile/CCPP/
and reading the information there.  Much of the initial push for
CC/PP came from the mobile computing sector, but I think it is 
very important that WAI participants follow the progress of this
key building block for the 21st century web.

You can also read a little bit more on my own http://ccpp.org/ web
site; it's something I wrote for a HWG newsletter over a year ago
and haven't really update then, but it explains CC/PP in simple
terms.

As I said before, unfortunately we don't have an edaptive products
page yet on the Reef site.  Reef is http://www.reef.com/.

--Kynn

-- 
Kynn Bartlett  <kynn@idyllmtn.com>                http://kynn.com/
Technical Developer Relations, Reef           http://www.reef.com/
Chief Technologist, Idyll Mountain Internet   http://idyllmtn.com/
Contributor, Special Ed. Using XHTML     http://kynn.com/+seuxhtml
Unofficial Section 508 Checklist       http://kynn.com/+section508

Received on Wednesday, 24 January 2001 12:41:44 UTC