Re: DC2002 and Accessibility Metadata

> 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

I'd add that the privacy lobby is already concerned that a combination
of things like User-Agent, Accept-Language, etc., when combined with IP
address, etc. can be used to create a signature for a user that is almost
as good as a persistent cookie in tracking them (although I doubt they
will bother unless there is a mass boycott of persistent cookies).  As
well as faking User Agents because of discrimination against minority 
browsers, there are people who fake them for privacy reasons.

> knowledge that they can reliably identify people and tell them "Phone ...
> for the service" or however they wan't to (claim they) provide the

That would probably pass under the UK Disability Discrimination Act, 
provided that the phone call would always succeed at any time that the
web access would succeed - you might have to take the site down on 
Christmas day!

> 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)

It becomes a more rational sell.  You have to sell it on the risk that
they will have to retrofit at very short notice, and that retrofitting
is much more expensive than designing it in from the start.

> and a
> > sign of quality. All users prefer to use clear and clean sites and
> would use

Most, however, don't seem seek out the text only version of a site (often
well hidden to GUI browsers, e.g. as a very low contrast text as
graphics button, even though that can be much easier to use than the
GUI version.  This may well be because they don't realise they are there,
or because the extra work to initially navigate to it is an obstacle.  It
might also be from bad experience of very incomplete ones (e.g. Channel
4 in the UK).

Received on Monday, 16 September 2002 17:37:36 UTC