Re: Testing web page accessibility by phone

for many people, your analogy is true.  I don't see what this has to do
with blindness at all.

Apples and oranges.  On your point of time, This is why in this country,
we have regulations for test taking that level the playing field.  Doing
a job is not the same as accessing the material.  It will never be the
case that all equally quallified individuals will be competative in time
due to the ways and means of access.

Returning to the topic of the web, if you look closely at all the
specifications for authoring and software development that are designed
to enhance accessibility, you will find that while there are standards
and there are guidelines and there are policies, there is much
comonality among them.  the differences have to do with totality of
process but if crafted carefully using these sets and drawing on
techniques that have been proven to work and that the blind themselves
have helped to design, we get pages that are as accessible as possible.
We do not and will not live in a perfect world but the best way of
getting as close as possible is through mutual convergence toward a goal
and I see no use in pointing up defficiencies toward that end since this
ground has already been thoroughly covered the president of nfb
notwithstanding.

From a blind man who surfs cyberspace in the dark and tries to shed
light whereever he goes.

----- Original Message -----
From: "phoenixl" <phoenixl@sonic.net>
To: <phoenixl@sonic.net>; <poehlman1@comcast.net>; <w3c-wai-ig@w3.org>
Sent: Tuesday, May 28, 2002 9:53 PM
Subject: Re: Testing web page accessibility by phone


Hi,

Perhaps another way to look at web pages is as vehicles.  For some
vehicles, a driver needs only basic skills.  For other vehicles, like
semi's or busses, additional skills are needed.  For many blind people,
often web pages are like driving semi's when they have only the basic
driving skills.

Some people may not consider amount of time to be an issue for
accessibility.  Other people do.  Recently, the national president of
NFB spoke on the Berkeley campus and gave the audience the distinct
impression that amount of time can be an accessibility issue.  For
example, suppose a manager is evaluating two employees who have the same
job which uses web pages, but one is sighted and the other is blind.
The blind worker takes 5 times as long as the sighted person doing the
same work.  If they have the equivalent background, the probability is
that the blind person is not likely to be evaluated as well as the
sighted person performing the task.  If part of the job requirements, is
performing the various tasks within certain amounts of time, the blind
person could be seen as not being able to meet the job requirements.
From a fiscal point of view, the company could use the money paid for
the blind worker to hire a sighted person to get 5 times as much work
done.  Which would be more cost effective?  (It is hard to tell a
business
that they shouldn't worry about cost-effectivesness.)

If accessibility can be measured strictly objectively, why are there
different
standards, e.g. W3C, 508.

Scott

> Web pages are like cars.  you need to know how to drive before getting
> into one.
>
> If it takes a blind person or any person a certain amount of time to
do
> something as opposed to some other person, what does this say?  It
only
> serves to tell me that different methods of getting from here to there
> produce different results.  This does not speak to the question of
> accessibility.  Accessibility can be measured quite objectively.
> Compare two copies of the same page.  One has been developped to
> validate and with the wcag applied in a sensable way.  the other is
the
> same page but has been developped independantly without these
> groundings.  Now, take those two pages and test them around with all
> kinds of people and look at the results.

Received on Wednesday, 29 May 2002 07:04:59 UTC