Re: Jakob Nielsen's PDF format report

the alternative is simple.  It would not have cost them much on the
scale of things if they didn't want to do it in house or could not do it
in house to turn it over to someone who could produce it in an widely
accessible form.  I do not think it is the job of the wai to undertak
paying for all the inaccessible documents out there to be made
accessible.  I'd have done it for him for comparitive peanuts if he'd
but asked.

----- Original Message -----
From: "Scott Luebking" <phoenixl@sonic.net>
To: <kynn-edapta@idyllmtn.com>; <phoenixl@sonic.net>;
<poehlman1@home.com>; <w3c-wai-ig@w3.org>
Sent: Tuesday, December 25, 2001 12:55 PM
Subject: Re: Jakob Nielsen's PDF format report


Hi,

There is a difference between philosophy and practicality.  It is easy
to make a philosophical judgement.  The hard part is implementing
it in the real world with its limitations.  Given that Norman-Nielsen
group is not a non-profit organization and that a fair amount of
money was spent conducting the research in various countries,
what are the alternatives?  Perhaps WAI needs to look at ways to
support such research so that the results can be distributed
without concern for recouping cost?  Or perhaps WAI could
buy the rights to the document?

Scott

PS  Are all documents concerning accessibility available in some
widely accessible format?  Are there any books on web page accessibility
not available in a widely accessible format?

> I live in the real world and this is getting way off topic but I can
> tell you that most of the blind people I know do not have scanners and
> have you ever tried to use a scanner to access auditorily a complex
> document like this?  If you think pdf is a nightmare, try doing that
> with one of those expensive packages developped for the blind.  Yes,
> there is a lot of good use for this software but I would not want to
> depend on it for say learning how to write html or css or js or c++...
>
> The fact remains that if the topic of something is accessibility, it
> should be available in at least one widely accessible form.  I have
> found that in most cases, people who do not require a widely
accessible
> form won't use it for their love of paper and paper form so I doubt it
> would detract from his money making to make it available in an widely
> accessible form.

Received on Tuesday, 25 December 2001 13:31:19 UTC