RE: examples of sites with good accessibility

>  I was just hoping for any examples of retail sites that are accessible.

My point is that there are none - no "examples of retail sites that are 
accessible" because:
1.  Not everyone or even a known subset of this list agrees to any site 
being accessible.
2. This list or even the working group has not agreed to what accessible 
is, if they did, WCAG 2.0 would be done or WCAG 1.0 would still be 
sufficient.
3.  Even though we had (many years ago) some level of agreed to definition 
in WCAG 1.0, there are known problems (e.g., because of its age) and now 
differences of opinion in how to interpret the guidelines.

My second point is that there are "techniques" that have gone through some 
consensus process, so those should or could be referenced.  If someone 
tells you that xyz site  is good or that abc is good example of 
accessible, ask them to be specific.  What analysis have they done to 
determine that?  Would someone else reach the same conclusion? 

The good first step in having some credibility in the discussion is to 
remove the term "accessible" and replace it with something else more 
specific.  For example, is there an archived site that validates to some 
W3C ?  Is there an archived site that passes a set of a testing tool's 
checks?  etc. Something specific that 2 different people could do and 
reach the same conclusion.  In my opinion, these techniques are just 
that..  And until someone or group creates a real site from a collection 
of best practices that has been reviewed and tested, all we have are 
opinions of what are  "examples of retail sites that are accessible". 

Regards,
Phill Jenkins
IBM Worldwide Accessibility Center
http://www.ibm.com/able

Received on Thursday, 19 October 2006 22:49:08 UTC