Re: Accessibility: Good or bad for business? (Was: Public list or not?)

Robert Koberg wrote:
> You are categorizing a wide variety of people as people with disabilities. I
> don't think all old or foreign people consider themselves disabled.

I dodn't mean these groups are disabled, I meant that not only the
disabled
people benefit from an accessible web.

> Would you say any person in a minority that does not have the things they
> want are disabled?

The group of disabled people in the wesntern world is larger than one
may think.
Depending on where you place the treshold for the level of disability to
have
special needs, its aroun 3% through 17% percent of the population.

Taking all the people having good access to the web in account that are
elderly
and/or disabled, and/or aren't very good at english the group is even
larger.

> How many and what types of disabled people do ALL sites need to accommodate?

That will and shall be the choise of the author(s) and their bosses
behind
the website. The goel should be to ALWAYS take into account (not as a
rule but as
a pointer) the blind, visual impaired, dyslectic, and the elderly,
youngsters,
and foreigners.

> Who is going to QA all of this?

The guideline, recommendatio, tutorials by the WAI the websites by the
authors choise, this since the QA of the websites itself is nice to have
but not explicitly nescasery a must have or else it wouldn't work.

> To me, it seems we are still in the pioneering phase of the web. Companies
> are mostly clueless on how to make it work *for them* so many things are
> tried and tossed. Why do they (we) need to be burdened by providing for ALL
> accessibility needs when a site could be gone in a year? Should we try to
> survive first? Have you noticed the economy is smoking a turd?

For the web in general I don't think so, more then ten years should be
enough time to be crystalized enough to be useable. For accessibility
isues
we are indeed somewhere near the half of the pioneering stage.

Furthermore the accessibility of a website is more than ALT tags on
images.
Its about the whole concept of a site. With the accessibility i mind and
tutorials within grasp an author has the tools on how to express
yourself
on the web, how to mold the inrormation into somethnig usable for the
web.

Companies can tak a lot out of the web, not in the way the .com bubble
went. The problem with the .com bubble was many (too many) people
jumping in taking busyness on the web without product but only ideas
on some ervice. An accessile website can lead to more common knowlehde
of your company, a lower threshold into going into busyness with
the company behind the website.

> Should the pioneers who are blazing new trails be forced to make them
> wheelchair accessible? Or should that come later?

That is depending on if the peolpe in a wheelchair NEED to use these
new trails on their own or in a large group amoung their other fellow
settlers. For the web its clear they are on their own, or should they
depend on their family and friends to surf the web for them?

 
> What is more likely?
> 1. People will address all usability needs in their websites (hopefully you
> are not asking the government(s) to enforce this?)
> 2. Some companies will see enough of a market to create a good reader for
> people with disabilities

1 -> Not enforced by the government(s) but moraly.

2 -> You only take the blind and visual impaired into account here
again.
     There are good readers available but since the nature of some (if
not
     alot of) websites are designed so badly no reader can or will do
that
     job. How do you imagine a flash animation, (or image without an ALT
     tag) must be readout or translated to braille by a machine? This
takes
     more advance neuro-fuzzy technology than currently (or in the near
     (say 10 years)) will be possible to implement. Just imagine that
would
     be a machine fully capable of understandin the essence and meaning
of
     shapes, colours, and objects. It must be able to see an block of
     pixels and say 'here is a photo of a famaly with their two dogs.
The
     husband is on the left not looking very happy, the children and dig
in
     the front center, and on the right is the wife she is waving her
hand
     to the photographer.' Is this realistic??
     If it finally is all the other groups are still not addressed.
     
Christian Bottelier

Received on Wednesday, 21 August 2002 09:43:04 UTC