- From: Patrick Lauke <P.H.Lauke@salford.ac.uk>
- Date: Tue, 31 Mar 2009 15:55:28 +0100
- To: <w3c-wai-ig@w3.org>
> Accessys@smart.net > the key part of at least USA law is that it cannot be considered > accessible or compliant if it requires a person with a disability > to have a specific piece of equipment or software that is not > required of everyone or is not provided free to everyone who needs it. Are refreshable braille displays available free for those who need them? Before projects like NVDA (still quite flaky), was there any freely available Screenreader for Windows, or was Windows then deemed non-compliant? The way I understand it (and this is, of course, my personal interpretation), the whole concept of accessibility-supported technologies is there to ensure that, in principle, there is at least a baseline reassurance that content is created in a way that it can be perceived/operated/used in at least a best-case scenario (user with latest technology available...latest version of JAWS etc for instance). The specific decision of how far to fall back to, though, is then left up to site developers/owners, and not mandated through WCAG itself. I could foresee that, when it comes to court cases involving sites claiming WCAG 2.0, a lot of the discussion will revolve around whether or not the choice regarding which accessibility-supported technology (baseline) was chosen and if that choice was realistic. > what about connection speeds, how fast is a minimum speed needed. Is speed an accessibility issue? If I'm on a slow connection, does that *prevent* me from accessing content, regardless of ability/disability? My feeling would be that no, it's not an accessibility (as in relating specifically to users with disabilities) issue. > everyone likes to work on the cutting edge but many people with disabilities > are on the edge of poverty and cannot afford upgrading every few years. Fundamentally, that's a societal issue, rather than one that should be addressed by web content accessibility guidelines as such. But, as noted above, if it came To court cases, the choice of technology will need to be weighed up against the particular audiences a site is targetting. > many people with disabilities (and others) just don't want to change, > they have figured out the assistive tech they have and it works for them, > so do they need the newer bells and whistles, and should we force them to > aquire these? Personally, I think that "preference" is not a strong enough case for or against technological choices. Some of my visitors may prefer to use Mosaic 1.0 or Netscape 2.0, but that doesn't mean that I'm only making sites that target that lowest common denominator. All that IMHO, of course. P ________________________________ Patrick H. Lauke Web Editor Enterprise & Development University of Salford Room 113, Faraday House Salford, Greater Manchester M5 4WT UK T +44 (0) 161 295 4779 webmaster@salford.ac.uk www.salford.ac.uk A GREATER MANCHESTER UNIVERSITY
Received on Tuesday, 31 March 2009 14:56:11 UTC