Re: compatibility

Standards do not necessarily beget accessibility or usability.  There
are many "standards" compliant sites out there which sneer at
accessibility.  The web content accessibility guidelines were relevant
when published but are now in bad need of fixing.  This is why partly at
least 2.0 is being developped.  I am answering two posts at once here
and I am coming from a long background of experience in accessing sites
which claim to be standard or accessible which defy me to get a new
browser.  We need to take the burden off the user and put it on the
developpers and creators who serve us.  I know that there is not always
a clear vision of how to do this but after all, if all the david
poehlman's of the world decided to stop using the computer and stick to
the phone instead, a lot of markets would dry up and you'd see something
the likes of which would pale the dot com fall.

I did not say that the accessibility guidelines were developped in a
vacuum.  I said that the web standards have been developped in a vacuum
and that vacuum is user centrism.  Or are the standards being
missapplied.  We are having a discussion similar to this one on the
blinux list.  this one concerns the fact that the stamps purchase
interface of:
http://www.usps.com
cannot be interacted with via either links or lynx.  It is it seems due
to the way js is implemented on the site that these state of the art
standards compliant user agents cannot cope. on the other hand, there is
a site in the uk which is perfectly accessible by both.  When you access
the former site with either of these browsers, you are told to upgrade
which is what that bit of code in the wsp project renders.  I have
upgraded thank you very much to the latest version of the browser on my
palm or the latest version of the lynx or links or conquer or mozilla or
whatever that is not ns, aol, ie... and guess what, I still get the
upgrade nag.

have all the eye candy you want, Have all the neat nifty stuff you like.
Do anything you like but the bottom line is what benefits the user.

On the paper.  I did say or meant to say regular news papers and I do
know some well practiced third grade educated people who read the wall
street journal every day in fact.  The point here was though that if it
is good enough for the news papers, it is good enough for the web in
that the strategy is to deliver to the consumer what the consumer needs
to buy your product or access the information and or read the adds on
your site.

No, I am not befuddled enough or perhaps I am too befuddled to think
that each piece of code needs to be worked for every possible and not
possible mix of user agents, os and user.  I am though confused enough
by what is out there in this day and age to wonder why I still cannot
access increasingly a growing number of what used to be simple things to
access.

Received on Tuesday, 16 July 2002 09:36:22 UTC