- From: Ben Canning <bencan@microsoft.com>
- Date: Wed, 31 Oct 2001 10:14:06 -0800
- To: "Kynn Bartlett" <kynn-edapta@idyllmtn.com>
- Cc: <w3c-wai-ig@w3.org>
Don't you think you're jumping the gun a bit on the 'public humiliation' angle? You've been worrying about that all week, yet aside from one or two posts (and the email that was sent to the webmaster, which I agree was not well thought out) everyone on the list has been quite civil throughout these threads. No one has resorted to calling the webmaster names or called for his public lynching. I agree we don't need public humiliation of individuals, but we certainly need public discussions about the accessibility failures of high profile sites like this one to raise awareness within the industry that this is a problem that needs to be addressed. You can be sure that I hate it when BugNet 'outs' some bug in one of our products, but you can also be sure that I try very hard to avoid showing up on BugNet. Why not the same for accessibility problems? Going public doesn't have to mean attacking people and calling them names, it can be about alerting the public to problems and raising awareness. -----Original Message----- From: Kynn Bartlett [mailto:kynn-edapta@idyllmtn.com] Sent: Wednesday, October 31, 2001 10:05 AM To: Ben Canning Cc: w3c-wai-ig@w3.org Subject: RE: How to Complain to a Webmaster At 09:42 AM 10/31/2001 , Ben Canning wrote: >The one quibble I have is one your last point about escalation . I don't think there's anything wrong with going public about the inaccessibility of a major site provided it's done with tact and without ad hominem attacks on the webmasters. In fact, I think it s crucial that escalation in one form or another does occur. I don't think I said "never escalate", just that it's rarely useful. If it's what's necessary, then give it a shot, but don't expect that it will have much of an effect. >Of course, I m not arguing for this community to becomes a band of crusading harpies denouncing evil webmasters for building inaccessible sites ...but that is the very real danger. >we both recognize that the problem is more a lack of awareness than malice but it s only by making the public aware of these problems, escalating to use your term, that we ll avoid designers building inaccessible sites in the first place. There's no way to stop them, is there? Other than education. Public attacks might, at best, shame a few of them into changing stuff, but it will always be at the surface level -- a cheap fix guaranteed to get the protesters off your back and you can then issue press releases about how much you pay lip service. >It s great that you re willing to provide free accessibility consulting to the SLC site, but that s not really a scalable solution in the long run, is it? We need to prevent these sites being built this way in the first place. How do you prevent them? Through teaching, not through public chastisement and humiliation. How much good did all the talk and complaining about the SLC site do? --Kynn (PS: I'm not willing to provide free consulting to SLC, just point them in the right direction. I explicitly made -- in private email -- an offer to provide consulting and training services, not-for-free.) -- Kynn Bartlett <kynn@reef.com> Technical Developer Liaison Reef North America Accessibility - W3C - Integrator Network ________________________________________ BUSINESS IS DYNAMIC. TAKE CONTROL. ________________________________________ http://www.reef.com
Received on Wednesday, 31 October 2001 13:14:42 UTC