RE: User Responsibility for Web Accessibility

I have 2 conflicting philosophical responses to your excellent, provocative
article:

1. Of course it's the user's responsibilitiy, once the designer has
discharged his/her accessibility duties.  That's why the phrase "until user
agents can..." is used.  How can it be right to hold a designer hostage to
certain technologies merely preferred by some users, if suitable
alternatives exist?  Looking at the issue economically, there is a set of
costs for backward compatibility.  If a "backward" user agent still exists,
but is used by only a handful of people who all could use something else,
the accessibility cost per user becomes too high to justify. (This is
especially true if we assume that only so much money will be spent on
accessibility overall.  Then every euro spent on "unnecessary" backward
compatibility prevents other accessibility improvements that may serve the
same people better, or serve many more people.)

2. Of course it's not the user's responsibility!  Many of the accessibility
settings in today's user agents are not defaults.  What percentage of
consumers understand how to configure their browsers?  I would guess less
than 5% of consumers with disabilities have the necessary information and
confidence.  Is that their fault?  If not, why should they be punished?

I'm not sure you will gain anything useful for your update, but I think such
points are important to consider.  Let me thank you again for allowing us to
raise our eyes from the everyday technical tasks to a larger arena.

*****
Jim Tobias
Inclusive Technologies
tobias@inclusive.com
732.441.0831 v/tty
www.inclusive.com
 

> -----Original Message-----
> From: w3c-wai-ig-request@w3.org 
> [mailto:w3c-wai-ig-request@w3.org] On Behalf Of James Craig
> Sent: Monday, March 22, 2004 12:17 PM
> To: w3c-wai-ig@w3.org
> Subject: User Responsibility for Web Accessibility
> 
> 
> 
> I am about to post a follow-up to a topic brought up in our 
> SXSW panel, 
> but I wanted to get some more feedback, first. Any thoughts?
> 
>   User Responsibility for Web Accessibility:
>   <http://cookiecrook.com/sxsw/2004/demo/>
> 
> Thanks in advance,
> James Craig
> 
> -- 
> http://cookiecrook.com/
>

Received on Monday, 22 March 2004 15:37:00 UTC