RE: Rockville, MD- Seeking low vision users for testing federal w ebsite

You ask a good question.  I assume that the AT would follow the WAI
guidelines and correctly interpret correctly formed "standard" datastream.
Not sure what I should call that datastream.  Is that HTML, XHTML, ... ?  In
any case, the WAI is producing suggested ways to accommodate and the
Assistive Technology needs to be held to correctly working with that.

And, we need to be pushing and pulling development tool builders to build
better web sites.  

I do understand the frustration.  I also know it won't go away in an
instant, and the people working toward the goal always need encouragement.
Let's do some of the "speak softly".  

Dan


-----Original Message-----
From: David Poehlman [mailto:poehlman1@comcast.net]
Sent: Wednesday, December 18, 2002 8:18 AM
To: Nissen, Dan E; WAI-IG
Subject: Re: Rockville, MD- Seeking low vision users for testing federal
website


what are at standards?

----- Original Message -----
From: "Nissen, Dan E" <Dan.Nissen@UNISYS.com>
To: "WAI-IG" <w3c-wai-ig@w3.org>
Sent: Wednesday, December 18, 2002 8:07 AM
Subject: RE: Rockville, MD- Seeking low vision users for testing federal
website



Hi!
I see a whole lot of criticism of what is a pretty minimal description
of a
part of an activity that is definitely going to be better than not doing
it.
The stick seems to be all some of you know how to do.  How about the
carrot
and see if we can encourage people to start down this road without
setting a
standard none of us can meet?  No way all the discussed environments
need to
be tested if the AT follows the standards and the web site is also
designed
to the standards.

The expectations are way up there and the criticism is pretty quick on
the
draw.

Best regards,
Dan

-----Original Message-----
From: David Poehlman [mailto:poehlman1@comcast.net]
Sent: Wednesday, December 18, 2002 6:18 AM
To: Joe Clark; WAI-IG
Subject: Re: Rockville, MD- Seeking low vision users for testing federal
website



any testing which reaches the rong conconclusions and passes them off as
correct is bad.

----- Original Message -----
From: "Joe Clark" <joeclark@joeclark.org>
To: "WAI-IG" <w3c-wai-ig@w3.org>
Sent: Tuesday, December 17, 2002 10:42 PM
Subject: 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 Wednesday, 18 December 2002 09:40:19 UTC