RE: Concerns with Accessibe joining W3C

I would agree with you if the only thing we knew about accessiBe is that they propose to become members. But we know a great deal more. For a start, they actively discourage website owners from learning about accessibility and fixing the issues with their websites. That is not some peripheral opinion of theirs - it's the basis of their entire business model. That alone puts them completely at odds with the objectives of the W3C and all its existing members.

We know that not only does their tool not make a significant improvement to the websites it is applied to, but the tool itself has serious accessibility barriers. These could be easily fixed, but it is an indictment of the company's competence and/or commitment to accessibility that it either doesn't know about them or has chosen not to fix them.

I do not believe that we should overlook these and their other behaviours when assigning motives or predicting their future actions.

Steve
 

-----Original Message-----
From: Charles 'chaals' (McCathie) Nevile <chaals@yandex.ru> 
Sent: 29 May 2021 07:09
To: w3c-wai-ig@w3.org
Subject: Re: Concerns with Accessibe joining W3C

Again, this is ascribing motives to individuals and making specific assertions about what they will do based on those motives. That is not reasonable behaviour.

As Patrick pointed out, a vast amount of work done over the 24-year existence of WAI was done by private companies, or organisations funded by investment money, or individuals looking to be paid by someone.

Investors can choose whatever reason, or combination of reasons, to put money into an organisation.

Completely hypothetically (I neither know nor care about the specific details of this case), it is entirely possible that the series A money came from some organisation whose mission is to improve accessibility, and a condition of the funding is participation in W3C and demonstrating an improvement in the effectiveness of their work specifically to counter the current stream of bad-mouthing that many in the accessibility community raise against them, by actually answering the complaints with improvements.

It is quite reasonable to point out things that don't work as advertised, or why a certain solution they develop fails to meet a certain requirement. It is reasonable in turn to question whether that requirement still makes sense. The point is to reach consensus on the answers to such questions. We have been doing that in WAI for 20-odd years, and should continue.

cheers

Chaals

On Sat, 29 May 2021 01:56:00 +1000, Steve Green <steve.green@testpartners.co.uk> wrote:

> Their investors expect the company to maximise the return on their 
> investment and won’t want anything to get in the way of that, >even if 
> it makes the world better.



--
Using Opera's mail client: http://www.opera.com/mail/

Received on Saturday, 29 May 2021 12:21:46 UTC