- From: David Poehlman <poehlman1@home.com>
- Date: Tue, 25 Dec 2001 09:25:37 -0500
- To: "Scott Luebking" <phoenixl@sonic.net>, <w3c-wai-ig@w3.org>, "Kynn Bartlett" <kynn-edapta@idyllmtn.com>
you are mixing apples with oranges here. and how small do you know the left out audience is. He's selling the report in hard copy, The report is of interest and will be used as a bible by many more than web developpers and he is writing about accessibility and showing in the way the report is produced that he really doesn't care about the topic. ----- Original Message ----- From: "Kynn Bartlett" <kynn-edapta@idyllmtn.com> To: "David Poehlman" <poehlman1@home.com>; "Scott Luebking" <phoenixl@sonic.net>; <w3c-wai-ig@w3.org> Sent: Monday, December 24, 2001 9:16 PM Subject: Jakob Nielsen's PDF format report At 3:39 PM -0500 12/24/01, David Poehlman wrote: >seems to me that if he was writing about accesibility, he'd have had a >perfect opportunity to demonstrate it. Sure, it would be nice, but there's no easy way to make money from selling a collection of HTML files. Heck, there's not even a standard way to -package_ HTML files as you can with PDF. Let's put it this way. If I could make an audio tape which I could then sell to the thousands or millions of web developers who can hear, and then they would produce accessible web sites, accessible to everyone after hearing this, should I do that? Or should I decide not to, because the much, much, much smaller percentage of web developers who can't hear -- who may ALREADY know something about web access anyway -- couldn't use my tape? When it comes down to it, Jakob's audience is NOT blind users and web developers. Those people, quite frankly, already know that the web sucks when it comes to usability, and nearly all of them could come up with their own set of recommendations _anyway_. His primary audience for this was not people with disabilities. Ergo, he used a format that met the needs of his primary audience as well as his primary business goal of selling a complete package in an easily usable format. You'll note that nobody else has provided a better format -- a tar file of HTML pages comes nowhere close, for example. Perhaps the onus should be on the W3C to provide such a format which can replace or parallel PDF use? When I write a book -- such as the XML and CSS books I'm currently working on -- you can bet your booty that I talk about accessibility, even to the point that my editors raise eyebrows and ask me to tone it down. Now, none of those books (especially those with extensive screenshots) are written for anything other than an audience which can read and can see. Would it be better if I just left out the accessibility stuff? Or just not write books at all, since some of my friends wouldn't get to read them? --Kynn PS: Frankly, I find the price of Jakob's study much more objectionable than the delivery format. -- Kynn Bartlett <kynn@idyllmtn.com> http://kynn.com Chief Technologist, Idyll Mountain http://idyllmtn.com Web Accessibility Expert-for-hire http://kynn.com/resume January Web Accessibility eCourse http://kynn.com/+d201
Received on Tuesday, 25 December 2001 09:25:21 UTC