Re: DC2002 and Accessibility Metadata

On Mon, 16 Sep 2002, Jim Ley wrote:

let's add one more variable to this mess, many computer users, especially
among the less economically endowed (that was a "bad" one eh?)

   many of these folks and school children use common or multi user
computers, the library use a permanent link to the internet around here,
so how would you know what any individual using this computer actually
needed.  I can go to the library, toggle into text and use the computer
without any hassle, bring only what I actually need for adaptation.  

Bob




> "SHARPE, Ian" <Ian.SHARPE@cambridge.sema.slb.com> wrote in message
> news:FA94B04D5981D211B86800A0C9EA2841011422E3@cames1.sema.co.uk...
> 
> > What information should be contained in your profile? This should
> contain
> > any access technology installed, browser configuration (eg colours/font
> > sizes, user stylesheet in use), OS display/screen configuration, and
> user
> > preferences. This could be created by any or all of the browser, access
> > technology, manually by the user or even the OS. A simple text file
> (XML)
> > could easily be maintained for this purpose. Since there is no personal
> > information I can't see any problems with storage or abuse of civil
> > liberties. This actually tells you nothing about the user themself,
> simply
> > how the system is configured.
> 
> I can't agree that it tells you nothing about the user, it tells you a
> huge amount about the user and almost all of it is things that I do not
> wish websites to know about me.  Even if I'm completely anonymous when I
> first visit the site, as soon as I do any interaction (register/purchase
> etc.) then I'm immediately "known", and the AT technology installed would
> appear to very well indicate information I may not want people to
> automatically know.
> 
> Also your examples above are all about the configuration and the browser
> environment not the preferences of a user, how do I configure my browser
> to say I have red/green colour blindness, how do I say I find flickering
> at 3hz annoying but 10hz fine, how do I say I prefer text content unless
> it's the image is photographic and what is the server supposed to do with
> all this fine grained information.  If we give the users access to all
> the content we've got, the user can decide  (by configuration of their
> UA) how they access that content - How can some server who's never met
> the user, knows only a tiny amount about them, know what's best for the
> user?
> 
> How is a server supposed to know what to give a UA/AT combination it
> doesn't know about, do UA's have to be registered, or were you thinking
> of a complete UA description language - if not we'll run into the exact
> issue we've already got with the server making decisions on what the
> browser claims to be - currently in the HTTP_USER_AGENT string - the UA's
> will be forced to lie otherwise they won't get content appropriate to
> their UA.  This degrading of the information will make the information
> worthless as HTTP_UA already is.
> 
> Also, far from using the information to provide accessible content it can
> be used as an argument not to provide accessible content online.
> Providers can choose to build for a single environment, safe in the
> knowledge that they can reliably identify people and tell them "Phone ...
> for the service" or however they wan't to (claim they) provide the
> service to users.  Accessibility also becomes a much harder "sell",
> because the management can genuinely claim that all their users can see
> images (why bother with ALT and LONGDESC, look we know they don't need
> it)
> 
> > The use of meta tags for this purpose could be included in the
> guidelines
> > and even used to possibly promete the above desing model as best
> practice?
> > As government policy throughout the world adopt similar approaches to
> the
> > US, rather than "gettosing" accessible sites I this "categorisation"
> could
> > actually do the opposite. It could almost become a kind of kyte mark
> and a
> > sign of quality. All users prefer to use clear and clean sites and
> would use
> > them in preferrence to cluttered and unclear content.
> 
> This appears to be describing something very different to previously,
> this is about their being machine-readable claims about the accessibility
> of a resource, and in what way it fails, as we know most users don't care
> if a resource is WCAG AAA or not, they care if _they_ can access the
> content, and a fine grained vocabulary for describing how accessible a
> document is, is very useful.
> 
> Jim
> 
> 
> 

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Received on Monday, 16 September 2002 10:00:48 UTC