Re: Accessable Chat

I use irc when I chat at all mostly because it does not send me through
hoops to use it.  There are a couple of home grown systems that aren't
bad but they are especially developped for a particular situation and
are not widely used.

----- Original Message -----
From: "Christian Seus" <cas@ichp.edu>
To: "David Poehlman" <poehlman1@comcast.net>
Cc: "WAI (E-mail)" <w3c-wai-ig@w3.org>
Sent: Monday, March 11, 2002 12:54 PM
Subject: RE: Accessable Chat


David,

Thank you.  Have you used any of these systems.  IRC specifically? I
have recently read that IRC is outdated, but the article that I read may
be outdated itself.

Christian


-----Original Message-----
From: David Poehlman [mailto:poehlman1@comcast.net]
Sent: Friday, March 08, 2002 7:09 AM
To: Charles McCathieNevile; Christian Seus
Cc: WAI (E-mail)
Subject: Re: Accessable Chat

and some attempts have been aimed at making irc more pictorially
available for these groups as well and the windows clients for irc have
become fairly visually oriented but still remain at least to a great
degree accessible to those not utillizing images.

----- Original Message -----
From: "Charles McCathieNevile" <charles@w3.org>
To: "Christian Seus" <cas@ichp.edu>
Cc: "WAI (E-mail)" <w3c-wai-ig@w3.org>
Sent: Friday, March 08, 2002 6:16 AM
Subject: Re: Accessable Chat


My very personal 2 cents worth:

I would be extremely unhappy about a health-care related system that was
inaccessible. If it were not possible to find an alternative I would, of
course undertstand.

Anyway, I think the most widely accessible chat system (except for
people
with significant intellectual disabilities, or difficulty typing and no
voice
input systems - both groups who are not well-served by most existing
chat
systems) is based on IRC - there are any number of clients, including
some
that work well with screen readers, some rudimentary attempts at
producing
them to work well for various other users, and it is available on
virtually
every software platform.

Charles McCN

On Thu, 7 Mar 2002, Christian Seus wrote:

  I am looking for opinions and experiences on accessible chat rooms.



  I am in the market to purchase a chat program that could be used as an
added feature on mostly health care related websites.

  Is there an accessible chat program that is currently on the market?
Has anyone used accessible chat programs with a great ease of use?



  What would be your stance on a website that had a chat room that
wasn't accessible to all users?  Do you just not have chat?  Or would
you tolerate it?



  Thank you for your thoughts,

  Christian



  Christian Seus

  Technology Specialist

  Division of Policy and Program Affairs

  Institute for Child Health Policy

  5700 SW 34th Street, Suite 323

  Gainesville, FL 32608

  Toll-Free (888) 433-1851

  Phone: (352) 392-5904 x.275

  Fax: (352) 392-8822

  E-mail: cas@ichp.edu

  Web: <www.ichp.edu>



  -----Original Message-----
  From: Charles McCathieNevile [mailto:charles@w3.org]
  Sent: Wednesday, March 06, 2002 10:10 AM
  To: Access Systems
  Cc: WAI (E-mail)
  Subject: RE: GW Micro Helps Make Macromedia Flash Content Accessible
to People Who Are Blind



  On Wed, 6 Mar 2002, Access Systems wrote:

    On Wed, 6 Mar 2002, Charles McCathieNevile wrote:

    > ASCII text is not a solution that works. "ASCII art" - using text
characters
    > and layout to represent graphic content - is an extremely poor
choice for
    > making graphics that can be presented to users of braille, or
people using

    wasn't suggesting that it be used for graphics, your right almost no
way a
    person using a braille or text to speech reader could understand it.

    that is where the alt tag is handy

  OK, so it seems we are in agreement on that bit.
  Bob also said
    I was pretty sure there was a text set for most languages, I have
seen the
    Japanese version
  [snip]
    there is no one single method that everyone can use, but there is a
single
    language that every computer can use and that is ASCII.

  CMN
  OK, I think we are getting closer. ASCII is a way of encoding a
particular
  set of characters - those used in American English. (Actually not all
  computers can use it - IBM computers used a different system for a
long
  time...) There are equivalent systems for other kinds of characters -
and
  Unicode (also called ISO-10646, or some other names) is the one most
commonly
  recommended because it includes almost all characters used today, some
no
  longer used, and some for only strange usages like the "klingon
language"
  invented by fans of star trek. (In 64000 characters I guess the first
few
  people to add their own silly ideas get to have a bit of space. I
would
  have preferred Mayan, but there are probably more  speakers of
Klingon!).

  CHeers

  Chaals



--
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 Monday, 11 March 2002 17:45:09 UTC