RE: Fresh start? Re: Minimal Browser Capabilities

Now this part I really do agree with you about.  I get the equivalent of
about $400 US a month in Australia so after food rent electricity and
internet access I have very little left to0.  I noticed when I mentioned the
cost of Bobby I was met with derision that it could be a problem as it is
quite affordable to Developers.  Maybe but not necescarily for a developer
in many parts of the world.

I have also lived in various developing countries too and and acutely aware
that although in some of them a small sector of the society has access to
technology most of us would only dream of a large percentage of the
populations of the world do not.  I do consider that access for these people
is important and in fact am involved with an organization which collects old
computers from business and refurbishes them and provides them to some
extremely poor countries to provide among other things community internet
access.  Currently they are not really interested in accepting anything less
than a Pentium 1 class machine...or equivalent as they have found that even
in these countries people find that anything less is not useable.

Maybe what we have here is the situation that we should set useable
standards for the web which may need to be higher than some would like
(Always providing as complete as possible a text output.) but also work to
improve the access of those who need it through various programs which may
or may not be considered part of the WAI.

THe analogy I would use is that although I would like a car I must use a
bus.  That bus is now an accessible one, I do have to pay for it and forgo
many of the comforts convenience sound systems cigar lighters and other
luxeries,and may in fact take me a considerable time to complete my journey,
we cannot say that we must have old, slow cars which can impinge on the flow
of traffic, we must have fully accessible transport.  In the same way we may
not be able to provide everyone individual access to the web but we should
be able to provide every indivual with access to soem share of it through
comunal facilities.



Harry Woodrow

-----Original Message-----
From: w3c-wai-ig-request@w3.org [mailto:w3c-wai-ig-request@w3.org]On
Behalf Of Access Systems
Sent: Friday, 28 December 2001 10:21 PM
To: Harry Woodorw
Cc: Vadim Plessky; Jim Ley; w3c-wai-ig@w3.org
Subject: RE: Fresh start? Re: Minimal Browser Capabilities


On Fri, 28 Dec 2001, Harry Woodorw wrote:

I don't think a lot of people on these committees realize what many folks
with disabilities are actually operating with, even in this
country.  we're talking folks who may live on the less than $500 a month
from SSDI and paying the rent, phone and food bills consume most of it.

and in other countries as little as $5 a month.

BUT even on these budgets some internet access is still possible, but it
sure isn't a pentium anything.  I know folks who are trying to get enough
memory to install windows 3.1 but are on the internet and it is their only
source of outside information,  we cannot disenfrancise these folks and
then call it "access"

The whole world cannot upgrade twice a year!

  one of the advantages of Lynx is that it will run on dang near anything!

I recently logged on with lynx from an old Victor 9000, with an 8086, dial
up modem, and DOS 3.1 and it worked, the internet software was COMit, and
it was a UNIX link to the web.    the result was nothing fancy but it did
get information from sites that are considered accessible.  slow, yup it
was a 1200 baud modem, you sure don't want graffics at 1200 baud!!!

 now I am not saying this should be a minimum standard but I am saying
that there is a lot to be said for the versatility of lynx!

Bob

Received on Friday, 28 December 2001 09:52:36 UTC