Re: Note to listowners

> Is it too much to for people on here to understand why they are here?  If
> it is to promote the latest technology then there certainly are many other
> lists to be on.  If it is to promote accessibility then you HAVE to work
> for what is out there being used.

I think everyone knows that, but it is a complex issue. The point is that we
were talking about the undesirable behaviour of ONE user agent, and it's
true that a potential solution is to use another UA if you don't like the
behaviour of this one. In practice, that's tricky because the other UAs have
other weaknesses. This isn't fair, but it's the way it is. I agree with you:
people use IE for good reasons, despite its appalling shortcomings, and the
approach we use has to consider the reality of the situation. Doesn't mean
Mr Clark deserved a barrage of rotten tomatoes for challenging the status
quo, though.

Did you read James Craig's excellent page on the subject of pixel sizes?
http://cookiecrook.com/sxsw/2004/demo/

He sums up the situation very neatly, including:

"At what point does accessibility become the user's responsibility?"

This is the central question for me.

If someone chooses not to use the preferences option in their software that
allows them to resize type set in px units, why is that the designer's
fault? Different if the user doesn't know it's there. But someone said
precisely this to me yesterday. They knowingly chose not to use the feature
of their software that was put there to enable this specific thing, and
instead emailed the webmaster to tell them their site was wrong.

For me, that has drifted over a line.

I don't have an answer to it all, but I do know that there's something wrong
with the conventional guidance on the issue of text sizes.

> If you wonder why WCAG is not getting
> anything more than lipservice from businesses, then re-read the thread on
> skip navigation.  It went in a complete 360 degree circle in 3 days!

And your point is what? A lot of accessibility issues don't have clear
resolutions, and the point of this forum is surely to consider the different
angles of an issue.

>Now
> Joe Clark wants everyone out there to upgrade to the latest greatest.

I must have missed that bit...

> AND I STILL CANT GET THIS OUT OF MY HEAD.....
> from a member of the WAI IG LISTSERV:
> > I have said this before on this list and I will say it again here in
> > this  context.  First, there are quite a variety of at out there and
> > asking people  to test them by learning and using them is considered by
> > many to be way too  much.

This is nothing less than the simple unadorned truth. This is why the world
needs WCAG and overpaid accessibility consultants like me... thank goodness.

Received on Wednesday, 7 April 2004 16:15:15 UTC