RE: alt - data and reason Re: One more thought...

Unless you mistyped "quantitative" as "qualitative" I must disagree. All of us who have participated 
in these efforts at consensus, particularly the tragedy of ATAG-compliance avoidance, know full well 
that the arguments raised by the very tool designers have on the whole been driven by competely 
wrong motives.

Rather than being helpful about what could be done to get ATAG-compliant tools made, we hear (dare I 
say specious?) arguments centered on something besides the absolutely imperative need to make the 
tools used for Web stuff accessible to use and geared towards producing accessible content.

This was clear in the original meetings in Cambridge in the now distant past and persists. There is 
still the predominant ableism that clouds the reason of the very people charged with this task. 

Their self-denial of bigotry is so reminiscent of the sorts of excuses we make when dealing with 
sexism, racism, and the usual laundry list of human rights violations as to render it very difficult 
to curb the anger/frustration that so many feel. If the designers of these tools cannot at this time 
make their tools ATAG-compliant, why not? and when can they?

Love.

>From    : Charles McCathieNevile[mailto:chaals@opera.com]
Actually, we don't even have any decent qualitative data on this - and it  
is the crucial point in the entire debate...Until we have some useful and moderately convincing 
data, there is no clear reason to resolve ISSUE-31 one way or the other beyond conviction  
and guesswork. And it is quite clear that the results of those are not  
leading to consensus.

Received on Monday, 19 May 2008 17:05:43 UTC