RE: Browser Issues

First, it is worth noting that this is an issue recognised in the WCAG group,
who are trying to determine (among the many other work items they have) what
should be considered a minimum baseline for browsers - in terms of what
capability users have.

Further, it is not specifically older browsers that are "non-standard" -
there are known standards compliance issues in every browser I know of, and
some of these cause serious accessibility problems. A reason why people use
older browsers is because in some cases those are the ones that cause them
the fewest problems.

But it is true that getting users to upgrade is in principle a very important
way to get progress in accessibility. There are many difficulties involved -
in the real world people generally do not update their systems frequently any
more, sometimes for very good reasons.

(As someone who is using a version of Mozilla that has been available for
several months, rather than the new version with more accessibility features
this applies to me too. And I make an effort to keep most of my tools up to
dat - my Operating system was updated last week, and most of my browsers are
the latest available version. There are also tools I would like to
investigate using, but the reality of having to get my work done reduces the
available time I have to keep doing this. I think I am not alone in this
<grin/>)

cheers

Charles

On Tue, 26 Feb 2002, RUST Randal wrote:

[snip]

  While I do agree that an older browser causes accessibility issues, I feel
  that when standards are brought into the picture that older browsers should
  be considered non-standard and should be discouraged as much as possible.

Received on Tuesday, 26 February 2002 08:45:36 UTC