- From: Cynthia Waddell <Cynthia.Waddell@psinetcs.com>
- Date: Sun, 13 Jan 2002 16:23:41 -0800
- To: "Charles McCathieNevile" <charles@w3.org>, "Denise Wood" <Denise_Wood@operamail.com>
- Cc: <w3c-wai-ig@w3.org>
Charles, Do you have the url for the Australian Tennis Open? I would be interested to see it. Thanks, Cynthia Waddell --------------------------------------- Cynthia D. Waddell, JD Ciber Principal Consultant Subject Matter Expert Accessibility Center of Excellence (800)547-5602 or Fax (800)228-8204 ACE Offices are located at San Jose, CA, Sacramento, CA and Raleigh, NC USA San Jose Office: PO BOX 5456 San Jose, California USA 95150-5456 http://www.icdri.org/cynthia_waddell.htm -----Original Message----- From: Charles McCathieNevile [mailto:charles@w3.org] Sent: Sunday, January 13, 2002 3:44 AM To: Denise Wood Cc: w3c-wai-ig@w3.org Subject: RE: Legal requirements RE: statistics I wouold like to dispute a point in this email. It was suggested that the Olympics case had no impact, as shown by the inaccessible site prodced for the Salt Lake Winter Games. However, I would like to contrast this with the sitre produced for the Australian Tennis Open (which was going to be subject to the same courts, and was produced by the same company for a different commissioning organisation). That site was, in my opinion, a highpoint in the development of accessible sites, providing real time access in different forms to results in progress. Also, I am participating in this discussion, and I do not think that legislation is the primary reason why a site should be accessible - it is there because there are other good reasons, and it is a good way to get people's attention, in my opinion. (In genera I don't think that a law is a good reason for anything - it is either a reflection of scoiety's understanding that there is a good reason for something, or it is just a bad idea. But thats a whole different discussion for a different group <grin/>) cheers Charles On Fri, 11 Jan 2002, Denise Wood wrote: Simon, I agree with your comment that it is "...a shame that we have the need for this kind of legislation when we are all human beings, not something to be labelled." I doubt any one contributing to this discussion would regard legislation as the primary reason that a web site should be accessible. However, as Cynthia points out, we need legislation because barriers still exist that prevent some people from accessing Web sites. Regrettably, many of the arguments used to support the case for Web accessibility (such as the human rights arguments, the business arguments, and the universal design arguments) have failed to convince companies and organizations. That is why we often do need to fall back on legislation to present the most compelling case for Web accessibility. However, even then, test cases such as the Bruce Lindsay Maguire v Sydney Organizing Committee for the Olympic Games case fail to achieve the desired change in attitude/behavior. For example, many of you will recall the posting by Mike Burks in October last year when he suggested people review the Salt Lake Olympic site which at that time also demonstrated accessibility problems.So the Salt Lake Web site organizing committee and developers had obviously not taken heed of the precedent set in relation to the Sydney Olympic Web site. >From my experience, citing legislation, and even better, referring to specific test cases does at least get people to listen. Convincing them to act is another issue. My preferred approach is to to refer to legislation within the context of an overall presentation on why Web sites should be accessible. Such a presentation presents all of the compelling arguments without ignoring the primary focus being that every person has a right to access information and participate regardless of disability, socio-economic circumstances and their geographical location. At the end of the day though, I believe that in many cases, the most compelling argument for many companies will be the legislative implications arising from failure to make their Web site accessible. ------------------------------------------- Denise Dr Denise L Wood Lecturer: Professional Development (online teaching and learning) University of South Australia CE Campus, North Terrace, Adelaide SA 5000 Ph: (61 8) 8302 2172 / (61 8) 8302 4472 (Tuesdays & Thursdays) Fax: (61 8) 8302 2363 / (61 8) 8302 4390 Mob: (0413 648 260) Email: Denise.Wood@unisa.edu.au WWW: http://www.unisanet.unisa.edu.au/staff/homepage.asp?Name=Denise.Wood -- Charles McCathieNevile http://www.w3.org/People/Charles phone: +61 409 134 136 W3C Web Accessibility Initiative http://www.w3.org/WAI fax: +1 617 258 5999 Location: 21 Mitchell street FOOTSCRAY Vic 3011, Australia (or W3C INRIA, Route des Lucioles, BP 93, 06902 Sophia Antipolis Cedex, France)
Received on Sunday, 13 January 2002 19:21:31 UTC