Re: the market hasn't spoken - it hasn't bothered to listened [was Re: fear of "invisible metadata"]

[ cross posting removed, as it will fail - cross posting on mailing
   lists frustrates followups ]

Henri Sivonen wrote:

I haven't time to go over all of these, but this one particular struck me:

> <footer>
> Provides for skipping over administrative information in e.g. aural UAs 
> when the user wants to scan a page as quickly as possible omitting such 
> notices.

The name is presentational.  Logically, it means:  those things that the 
company lawyers told us we must have, but the designers would rather do 
without.  Amongst other things, like copyright notices, company 
registration information, etc., this often includes things that have 
been included because the lawyers have said they they are needed for 
accessibility, in particular, the site map link.

A user agent that suppresses this information is likely to be defeating 
the intent of the legislators, and, in particular, likely to be hiding 
accessibility features.  Designers already try to frustrate use by using 
small print and low contrast text.

-- 
David Woolley
Emails are not formal business letters, whatever businesses may want.
RFC1855 says there should be an address here, but, in a world of spam,
that is no longer good advice, as archive address hiding may not work.

Received on Thursday, 28 June 2007 07:06:51 UTC