Re: Rockville, MD- Seeking low vision users for testing federal website

> As others have mentioned, this is not the right approach to testing
> website accessibility.  At best it tests one narrowly-defined aspect
> of accessibility

...which nonetheless needs testing.

> at worst it risks reinforcing any bad practices
> you may have - such as authoring to browser behaviour at the expense
> of presenting the website contents clearly

...which you have no evidence they are doing.

> Both JAWS and Window-Eyes deal with one particular disability

...which nonetheless requires accommodation, and these are the two
most popular ways to do it.

> Both are themselves inaccessible to many users, by virtue of cost
> and the prerequisites required to install them

...which is irrelevant and a tiresome albatross hung around the
necks of the accessibility "movement." By this reasoning, no
adaptive technology should be developed if it cannot be handed out
for free to everyone who could possibly use it.

If you disagree with the planned testing of actual disabled users,
don't participate in it. But we need more such testing, and, as I
argue in my book, even sub-optimal testing of disabled users beats
the heck out of none at all.

-- 

  Joe Clark  |  joeclark@joeclark.org
  Author, _Building Accessible Websites_
  <http://joeclark.org/access/> | <http://joeclark.org/book/>

Received on Tuesday, 17 December 2002 22:42:54 UTC