Re: Accessibility of Excel documents

On Monday 11 March 2002 17:35, Simon White wrote:
> How does everyone on the list sit with the idea that there is a link to an
> Excel document for those who can access it through the application, and a
> page with a separate link that is an accessible table containing the same
> information for those who are unable to use Excel, don't have the
> application or are using a technology that does not support Excel
> documentation.

As much as I dislike Excel, both from an accessibility viewpoint and from the 
fact that the computer arithmetic in Excel is (was anyway) severly flawed and 
should not be used for anything beyond hobby, it was an idea of the web to 
use content negotation, so that if both users have the same application, you 
exchange the original files, if not, you convert, either on the fly, or by 
converting the document you want to exchange when you create it. 

Using Apache, you could in principle do this by using different file endings, 
configure the server to serv content based on the Accept header, but then, I 
guess nobody is really using this feature, it isn't that customizable in 
browsers. Finally, Excel isn't one format, is it?

So, I would steer clear of Excel entirely... :-)

Kjetil

Received on Tuesday, 12 March 2002 04:40:02 UTC