Re: Undoubtedly, an oversimplification ...

Dear Phill,

thank you for what i would designate "a reply", or otherwise put,
constructive criticism.

I am confused by other people's, and your, usage of the word "application".
In my understanding, a web site is an application, and what most people
refer to as an "application" is a bespoke piece of technology, that has
strictures in terms of it's operating environment, and its scope. You
admirably point to "apps that are accessible", but it would appear to me,
that, virtually by definition, 'apps' present barriers to usage, rather
than encourage inclusivity. By way of illustration, i believe it is the
case that i glean a beneficial user experience from the Internet, but to my
knowledge, in the last several years, i have only ever used one 'app', and
i have ceased using that, as i have found the actual 'Internet site' for
the said 'app' superior to the 'app'.

I have tried to clarify my understanding of JavaScript elsewhere. Made
terse: i am of the opinion that it is a useful technology, whose initial
purpose is currently being abused. I think that it is the case that
JavaScript was brought into being to serve a specific task: client-side
scripting. With the advent of technologies such as AJAX, sever calls seem
to have been introduced, which in one sense may be beneficial, in that they
allow HTML pages to be updated without a page refresh, but beyond this,
seem to have spawned a multitude of 'widgets', 'gadgets' and
'surveillance'. To summarise in a sentence: today, if i had the choice of
using two versions of a web site, one with, and one without JavaScript, i
would opt for the one without. This would not have been the case a decade
ago.

Self-reference is the plague of post-modernism, but i will re-emphasise:

".. if a web site, or an 'accessible version' of a web site, with the same
'content', were to be delivered, in a manner which is compatible with Lynx
..."


I was not suggesting that we all use Lynx, but that if we kind of tried to
'centre down' for the sake of the disabled, there might result a more
beneficial universality.

Regards,
Lewis.


On Fri, May 2, 2014 at 1:09 AM, Phill Jenkins <pjenkins@us.ibm.com> wrote:

> Dear Lewis,
> not only oversimplification - but unrealistic.
>
> Sure there is a refresh today, but Lynx was  initially developed in 1992.
>  Today's complex web applications are like yesterday's complex desktop
> applications.  So using a Lynx browser to try to run today's web apps  is
> like trying to run today's software on a PC DOS computer - it just doesn't
> work.  Sure there are some decade old web "brochure ware" sites that will
> work fine, but they are not applications and that is my point.  This is NOT
> an disability argument.  The same person with a disability outfitted with a
> reasonably cheap computer with a free copy of NVDA and a free Firefox
> browser will have a reasonably accessible time running a web app that is
> WCAG compliant.  Even having said that, there are apps that are accessible,
> but equally unusable by everyone. . .
>
> Note: Unlike most web browsers, Lynx does not support *JavaScript*<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/JavaScript><http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adobe_Flash>
> ,*[18]*<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lynx_%28web_browser%29#cite_note-FOOTNOTEWallen2011-18>which some [most?] websites require to work correctly.
>
> If one cannot afford a reasonably cheap computer, then it is an
> affordability issue, not a justification to ask for web apps to run on
> decades old technology.
>
> If you're running Lynx to get the so called speed of not downloading
> images, just turn images off, but you can't turn off JavaScript and expect
> the functionality of  desktop applications.
>
> If you don't want to or have to use web application and only need access
> to old static web pages, then by all means do so, but that is not
> justification to ask to be able to run in a JavaScript-less browser for the
> rest of the web apps.  Text only is NOT the issue with Lynx - it is its
> lack of JavaScript support.
> ____________________________________________
> Regards,
> Phill
>
>
> From:        L Robinson <dirk.samuel.robinson@gmail.com>
> To:        wai-ig <w3c-wai-ig@w3.org>,
> Date:        05/01/2014 04:43 PM
> Subject:        Undoubtedly, an oversimplification ...
> ------------------------------
>
>
>
> Dear group,
>
> my apologies, i have previously posted two comments on EOWG, when in fact
> i think they were relevant to the wider group:
> *http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/w3c-wai-eo/2013OctDec/0014.html*<http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/w3c-wai-eo/2013OctDec/0014.html>
> *http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/w3c-wai-eo/2014JanMar/0000.html*<http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/w3c-wai-eo/2014JanMar/0000.html>
>
> The point which i am trying to make was shared with Google, via an
> accessibility course, which i enrolled on, & failed. It sadly seems to be
> the case that people see others gaining advantage in this world with poor
> behaviour, and rush to imitate them; for instance, what seems to be a
> British fetish - my enemy's enemy is my friend. What i am trying to
> intimate, is that what i have tried to share with Google, has, probably not
> been shared with W3C, naturally.
>
> To introduce what i wish to say i will relate two quotes which i have been
> unreliably informed are Dostoevsky's:
> a) consciousness is a disease
> b) the only animal which is not adapted to its environment, is man
>
> The point is kind of illustrated as follows: if a web site, or an
> 'accessible version' of a web site, with the same 'content', were to be
> delivered, in a manner which is compatible with Lynx [1] (text only
> browser), then many of the 'complexities' of Web Accessibility would seem
> to vanish in a puff of pink smoke?
>
> References:
> [1] *http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lynx_(web_browser)*<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lynx_(web_browser)>
>
> Yours faithfully,
> Lewis.
>
> *-- Mr Robinson --*
>