Re: plotting accessibility

Kai Hendry writes:
 > 
 > On Wed, Jun 09, 2004 at 04:24:55PM +0100, Rotan Hanrahan wrote:
 > > problem. It can be (partially) solved by adding metadata to "explain" the content, 
 > > from which an informed decision might be reached.
 > 
 > I don't think semantics is going to catch on very quickly. Most people
 > can't link correctly.

I think it largely depends on the availability of good tools, and will
probably be taken up initially by organizations with significant
technical resources. I can also envisage the emergence of third-party
annotation services creating metadata to explain or provide additional
semantics for Web content, with device independence applications in mind.
 > 
 > And thinking about "accessibility" for awhile, I have to the conclusion
 > that it should narrowed down to people who are specifically disabled (in
 > the legal sense) and require special needs. It should not be a catchall
 > term.

Why not? If your delivery context requires that you use a speech
interface, for example, surely it doesn't matter so far as the
technical solution is concerned whether this is because you are
driving a car or have a disability. The technical requirements may be
the same in both scenarios; unless a speech interface is available,
the content is inaccessible to you.

Of course there is a policy difference in that the person with a
disability, unlike the person who is driving a car, can't simply
change the context (e.g., by moving to a graphical workstation in the
driver's case) and
thereby gain access to content which, in the car, would be
inaccessible. Rather, lack of support for a speech interface, in the
above example, may effectively deprive the person with a disability of
any access to the content; and hence it is an issue with which public
policy is legitimately concerned on human rights grounds. However,
from a functional standpoint, as mentioned earlier, the person with the
disability and the driver are in delivery contexts that, again in the
example proposed, are satisfied by identical technical means. I would
rather say that it is a question of accessibility in both cases, but
for the driver it is obviously not a question of "accessibility to
people with disabilities", which is a subset of "accessibility" tout court.

 > 
 > I also would like to suggest changing the tagline of d-i from:
 > "Access to a Unified Web from Any Device in Any Context by Anyone"
 > 
 > to something clearer, such as:
 > 
 > "Making the web portable"
 > 
 > or
 > 
 > "Scaling the web"
 > 
 > or
 > 
 > "Caring about platform interoperability"
To the contrary, I think the current wording is much clearer and I
prefer it to any of the alternatives proposed.
 > 
 > I would like the d-i do more to certify user-agents. Test suites and
 > guidelines.
On this and the remaining points I agree with Roger's comments.

Received on Friday, 11 June 2004 07:25:57 UTC