Re: Is it acceptable to provide two versions of a site to work around an accessibility problem?

I would not use nor call it a text only page.  I would if the client insists
charge extra for the required duplication and code the page so that it works
correctly and link to it with an accessible page link if need be and leave
the other the way the client wants it to be.  In this way, everyone gets the
full functionality of the page.

----- Original Message -----
From: "Julian Voelcker" <asp@tvw.net>
To: <w3c-wai-ig@w3.org>
Sent: Tuesday, March 04, 2003 8:16 AM
Subject: Is it acceptable to provide two versions of a site to work around
an accessibility problem?



Hi,

I am developing a site using XHTML and CSS that degrades gracefully to
a linear format for older browsers and text readers.

Users with their own stylesheets should be able to override the site
colours and font sizes without any problems.

The problem we have is that the client wants the content to be centred
on the page with some fixed width columns - if you try to increase the
font size in the browser some of the content ends up overlapping from
one column to the one beside it.  It only happens with the menu column
down the left hand side when there are long words in the menu.

I can get around this by providing a 'text only' style link on the page
so that users with problems can get the linear version.

Ideally I should try to persuade the client to move to more flexible
columns, but I have failed so far.

What would you suggest the best way to go with this is?

I would appreciate your feedback.

Cheers,

Julian Voelcker

Received on Tuesday, 4 March 2003 08:29:28 UTC