Re: Not making links...

It may develop this thread further to outline a specific case...

peepo.com is reasonably accessible say ~A. it more or less passes the w3c
validator, and has been hand checked to some extent.

it now links to a number of radio stations.
these mostly work in ie6, however very few work with ie5.2 on the mac.
the people who set up the radio stations have relatively sophisticated and
lengthy scripts for sending users to the correct stream.
I've had to shortcut this, because they ask too many questions, for our
users.
I don't wish to copy, let alone understand these huge tracts, neither do I
wish to reverse engineer them, there might even be legal implications.
Given the diversity of sites that we link to, a monolithic script for the
site would be truly gargantuan.

However many of the links will be down for reasons outlined above, for many
users, and this makes it in my mind a very poor example, and yet there is no
immediate solution that presents itself.

Hopefully this explains the area which may need further development.

jonathan

----- Original Message -----
From: "Charles McCathieNevile" <charles@w3.org>
To: "WAI IG" <w3c-wai-ig@w3.org>; "Jonathan Chetwynd"
<j.chetwynd@btinternet.com>
Sent: Tuesday, September 17, 2002 12:13 PM
Subject: Not making links...


>
> Provision of a text version and a visually interesting version of
something
> are two important parts of accessibility. Neither is sufficient to ensure
> full accessibility on its own, and even when they are both present there
is
> more that is required.
>
> There are various things that need to be done - as Jonathan says,
> accessibility isn't something that will be completely solved if we only
think
> of one page at a time.
>
> The Web Content Accessibility Guidelines are important, because they
provide
> the basis for at least making each individual page accessible. (well,
nearly.
> I'll return to that below.)
>
> But having accessible pages is no good if the browser is unusable. The
User
> Agent Accessibility Guidelines describe how to make sure that isn't the
case.
>
> And even if all the authors and browsers makers work hard to get
everything
> right (and the evidence is that they are working on it but many have not
yet
> got there), it needs to be possible to make accessible pages in the first
> place.
>
> The XML Accessibility Guidelines (an internal working draft was published
> yesterday at http://www.w3.org/WAI/PF/XML and comments are welcome)
describe
> what needs to be done to make sure that the format people use is
accessible.
>
> Actual conformance to these three specifications (full conformance, not
> just picking the easy parts) might really provide accessibility. We don't
> know yet - although there is enough triple-A WCAG conformant content to
test
> there isn't a triple-A UAAG conformant browser to test it on, and XAG is
> still a working draft in development. But it seems that if we haven't got
the
> whole thing right, at least things are improving. From what I find on the
Web
> there are more forward steps than backward steps.
>
> One of the biggest backward steps I can imagine would be not providing
> content just because we don't know how to make it completely accessible.
The
> only thing worse that I can imagine is deliberately not doing something
that
> we know (well, we believe strongly at any rate) would make content more
> accessible.
>
> (more about WCAG and individual pages...
>
> Actually WCAG 1.0 already worked for more than just individual pages -
there
> are several checkpoints dealing with sites, when to use client-side or
> servcer-side techniques, and presenting information that might be
available
> in a variety of forms. This has been followed up in the development of
WCAG
> 2, with the help of people who had applied WCAG 1.0 in this way, and I
hope
> that when WCAG 2 is ready it will be even clearer about this than WCAG
1...)
>
> cheers
>
> Chaals
>
>
> Jonathan Chetwynd wrote:
>
> Our students and staff expect users to be able to click once and get
> multimedia content. when every site has its own browser sniffers, knows
> nothing of bandwidth or plugins and this information has to be
re-evaluated
> on each occassion, our users are seriously disadvantaged. It is plain that
> ordinary users find this an unneccessary trial, and one that needs
attention.
>
> Are we not to provide a link to charlie chaplin's the general, just
because
> there is no text equivalent? In my view if the host maintains that this is
> best viewed in a certain size window, they may well be right. if it needs
> broadband, we may as well assume that is available too...
>
> provision of a text equivalent, no more meets 'accessibility standards'
than
> does the provision of multi-media, and we are a long way from that.
>
> Of more general concern, it is possible to imagine a triple A conformance
> portal, it is the sites that it links to that present a problem, and that
is
> not neccessarily, one of their own choosing. It is certainly time that
more
> of our efforts were put into defining the accessibility of something
greater
> than individual web pages.
>
> Our students genuinely need a 'fun' experience to motivate them, they wont
> get this from a wap phone, or a lynx browser, and yet we still do try our
> best to follow w3c/wai guidelines.
>
> jonathan chetwynd
>
>
>
>
>
>
>

Received on Tuesday, 17 September 2002 15:17:20 UTC