- From: David Poehlman <poehlman1@comcast.net>
- Date: Tue, 23 Mar 2004 09:52:40 -0500
- To: "wai-ig list" <w3c-wai-ig@w3.org>
I think the subject of this thread is miss leading. The user is not responsible for "web accessibility..." but I hope you will read on so you will see what the user is responsible for. First, It is helpful to put information on your pages about any obstacles that might arise that you can think of. Maybe a special page for that. I have seen these accessibility pages and in some have found quite helpful information. I have seen pages that offer help to use the site and found some of them to be quite helpful. Having said all this, I will say that it is the user's responsibility to gain at least the level of knowledge required to be able to recognize in those instances where it is possible if a problem they are having has to do with their configuration or something the author did or perhaps even to be able to over ride the author's miss intent if needed. The sad fact is that this requirement falls most squarely on the shoulders of those who most need to be able to access content that might not be written in ways that make it available to all in other words, not to wai guidelines etc. It is also the user's responsibility to learn and understand any technologies that they need to use to access the computer if those technologies are complex enough to warrant this need again, at least to the point where they can figure out if they can fix a problem by adjusting their technologies. I saw for instance, a screen reader user who figures that all graphics are useless so made sure to set all items of a graphical nature not to be rendered by jaws. Then, when failing to be able to access something, comnplains that it is inaccessible. This is poor judgement on the part of the user. The same would be true if someone decided to turn off their monitor and then complained that they couldn't use their computer and yes, I've seen this happen too. I agree that there needs to be a lot of continuing education out there and I agree that there will always be folk who till the day when interacting with the web is as easy as listening to the radio or watching television or picking up a book and reading it will choose badly and stick to it though and those, we can do nothing about. There are three areas of responsibility though and I can speak to them as someone who has worked on standards development, screen reader development from a testing point of view, testing of developped webs and some development guidance. They are: 1> The site developper and this is not news, has the *responsibility* to do the right thing with regard to making their content available and appropriately interactable if necessary. 2> The user agent/software developper needs to follow good practices in developping for the broadest possible audience and this includes all the components from installation to use and configuration. 3> The assistive technology developper must ensure that the services they provide and the software they develop will both foster ease of use and a robust rendering of *propperly* implemented work. None of the three above are exempt and all three fall short. What dismays me most is the assistive providor who thinks that bad code should be rectified and so provides a work around for it. I can understand that otherwise, there would be a lot of uproar, but this practice and others can discourage or defeat progress toward accessibility adoption by authoring and others. I think a better approach would be to let the user know that there is something rong with the page and to extract and provide the email address of the web master to send a note to with the explanation attached. The user wouldn't really have to know much about the code or do much but click send from the error box. This would not provide immediate accessability nor would it guarantee access, but if done correctly and an address also were included for someone of a technical bent who could take this up, perhaps someone in the wai for instance, we might have a new leg to move forward with.
Received on Tuesday, 23 March 2004 09:53:19 UTC