RE: Accessibility of web pages

At 04:59 AM 1/4/01 -0500, Charles McCathieNevile wrote:
>Likewise, even a commercially biased claim is more useful than no claim at all
[in response to David's "I can't see commercial sites spending any effort 
at all on creating descriptions of their site, especially as it goes 
against the principle that all marketing material must be in positive terms"]

Although the above exchange took place on an Amaya list I thought I'd 
interject this into the mix of why the tools we craft 
(authoring/evaluation/indexing/+) are important and indirectly why our 
guidelines/protocols/languages/+ must highly prioritize the facility for 
enabling assertions about accessibility conformance, and the concommitant 
proliferation (that's ivory tower for "spread") of assertions about those 
assertions - meta-metadata.

The most striking examples I've noticed of our incipient "Web of Trust" are 
eBay and Amazon.com. The mutual ratings amongst people posting to the 
former and the individuals' reviews of books with rather elaborately 
personalized bona fides on the latter are close to what can happen in the 
area under discussion

The "show me the negatives" button that will inevitably call up another 
view of things will be extremely effective. In the DRM (Disability Rights 
Movement) there are manifold examples of the potential for this as proven 
by numerous recent incidents: 1) the "flagpole mom"; 2) the Oz Olympics 
Site access incident; 3) the Nike ad blunder; 4) the FDR-in-a-wheelchair 
statue incident; 5) Kyle Glozier's speech at the Democratic National 
Convention (expanding what each of those refers to is left as an exercise 
for the reader).

When ("if" not a problem any more) digital signatures are routinely 
available without 1984-ish paranoia about their free public use, this list 
will grow exponentially. The ability to "index" (in the sense used by the 
Legion of Decency) has now become available to billions and their 
assertions are unhidable.

Something as simple as my 15-year sig line even permeates unexpectedly to 
headlines and even legislation. As we deliberate our 
notes/guidelines/recommendations/+ it may be useful to remember the central 
I Ching theme: "perseverance furthers".

--
Love.
                 ACCESSIBILITY IS RIGHT - NOT PRIVILEGE