Re: UK Access Rules:

This leads to the sorriest piece of accessibility compliance I know of: 
A University in Queensland turned off their servers at 5pm every night 
because they couldn't keep their admissions centre open 24 hours a day.

And this in a place with a high proportion of foreign students living 
in Europe, where the time zone difference is made viable in large part 
because of the Web...

The guidelines should make it clear what is and what isn't accessible, 
but policy makers should work out what are appropriate real-world 
constraints and whether there is a case for making an exception to 
accessibility requirements (in some places having the requirement is 
exceptional...)

chaals

On Friday, Oct 17, 2003, at 01:22 Europe/Zurich, Martin Sloan wrote:

> > However my understanding (from a lay point of view) is that it is 
> the service provided by the web site, not the web site > itself, that 
> is covered, so the provision of a reasonably equivalent level of 
> service through alternative means may be a > valid defence (your call 
> centre might have to be open on Christmas day, or you might have to 
> close the web site down > then!)
>
> Valid point. However it goes wider - the budget airline would have to 
> offer you the same airfare bought over the phone as it would online; 
> the Internet bank could not penalise you with less favourable interest 
> rates for using the telephone based service rather than the Internet 
> based one if you couldn't access the site.. A web site is open 24/7 - 
> a call centre costs money to keep open all hours when only a few 
> people might use it.
>
> martin.
>
--
Charles McCathieNevile                          Fundación Sidar
charles@sidar.org                                http://www.sidar.org

Received on Saturday, 18 October 2003 15:50:16 UTC