- From: Steven Faulkner <faulkner.steve@gmail.com>
- Date: Wed, 1 Apr 2009 13:24:46 +0100
- To: Ramón Corominas <listas@ramoncorominas.com>
- Cc: Phill Jenkins <pjenkins@us.ibm.com>, w3c-wai-ig@w3.org
Hi Ramon, just to pick up on this statement >It seems also that WAI-ARIA is been supported -more or less- by major browsers, but we should take in account the AT support for this technology, that (in my >opinion) is very poor. For JAWS, Window Eyes, NVDA and Orca at least, support for WAI-ARIA is good and getting better. for example: http://live.gnome.org/Orca/Firefox/ARIAWidgets details ARIA support in Orca regards steve faulkner 2009/4/1 Ramón Corominas <listas@ramoncorominas.com>: > Hello again. > >> Thanks for sharing your opinion, but "enough" and "cost" is a policy >> discussion in my pinion, not a technical software engineering discussion. >> "Costs" and "enough" is only mentioned WCAG 2.0 (see Note 2) as one of 4 >> choices (2d), but I do agree it should be part of the policy discussion. > > So let's see what are the "technical" choices you mention... > > "2. The Web content technology must have accessibility-supported user agents > that are available to users. This means that at least one of the following > four statements is true: > a. The technology is supported natively in widely-distributed user agents > that are also accessibility supported (such as HTML and CSS);" > > This is not -and as far as I know won't be- the case for Adobe PDF and > Flash, since they require a plug-in or different application. In my opinion > Adobe Reader itself (not the plug-in) can't be strictly considered as a true > "user agent", since it does not *retrieve* web content, although I could > accept Reader as a kind of external add-on to the user agent that renders > /downloaded/ web content. > > It seems also that WAI-ARIA is been supported -more or less- by major > browsers, but we should take in account the AT support for this technology, > that (in my opinion) is very poor. > > "OR b. The technology is supported in a widely-distributed plug-in that is > also accessibility supported;" > > (and I think we should implicitly add "and distributed in an accesible > manner") > > This would then be the case for Flash and PDF. As Matt has stated, PDF seems > to be well-supported in a wide variety of OS, user agents, and AT, so I > suppose that if content is well-formed, we can safely accept PDF as an > "accessibility supported" technology; anyway, I think we must still keep in > mind that most of the users won't have the latest version of the OS, user > agent or AT, so we will still be excluding people. But yes, technically > right. > > In respect to Flash, I only can say that all "accessible" Flash content that > I've been able to test only renders ok with some combinations of Windows + > IE + JAWS, and inserted in a particular way in the HTML. Perhaps its real > support is better than I can know and all content I've tested is badly done; > this would be great news for me, so I could then accept Flash as "safe" and > concentrate efforts in study and develop recommendations to generate good > content. > > It would be nice if Adobe developed official Techniques for Flash and PDF to > be included in the WCAG documents (perhaps they already exist somewhere?). > > My apologizes to Matt if it seemed that I rejected PDF, Flash, or any other > technology as accessibility supported. It was my fault to mention specific > technologies, since I'm only copying WCAG when they state that a technology > must have support to be considered supported (very logical, I think). > > "OR c. The content is available in a closed environment, such as a > university or corporate network, where the user agent required by the > technology and used by the organization is also accessibility supported;" > > Not the case, since we are talking about general content in the World Wide > Web. > > "OR d. The user agent(s) that support the technology are accessibility > supported and are available for download or purchase in a way that: > * does not cost a person with a disability any more than a person without a > disability and > * is as easy to find and obtain for a person with a disability as it is for > a person without disabilities." > > So for widespread web content, any technology (no names here) that is only > compatible with certain OS, user agent, and/or AT (not widely supported), we > should not be punished for suffering a disability. > > Am I right in my interpretation now? Which technologies will you consider as > "accessibility supported", then? > > Regards, > Ramón. > > > -- with regards Steve Faulkner Technical Director - TPG Europe Director - Web Accessibility Tools Consortium www.paciellogroup.com | www.wat-c.org Web Accessibility Toolbar - http://www.paciellogroup.com/resources/wat-ie-about.html
Received on Wednesday, 1 April 2009 12:25:33 UTC