Date: Sun, 4 Nov 2001 10:14:15 -0500 (EST) From: David Scheidt <rufus@brain.mics.net> To: Ted Mittelstaedt <tedm@toybox.placo.com> Cc: Mike Meyer <mwm@mired.org>, advocacy@FreeBSD.ORG, chat@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: RE: NatWest? no thanks Message-ID: <Pine.BSI.4.20.0111040959300.2371-100000@brain.mics.net> In-Reply-To: <001a01c16501$8514f380$1401a8c0@tedm.placo.com>
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On Sat, 3 Nov 2001, Ted Mittelstaedt wrote: > 2) Getting back to NatWest, where is the evidence that IE is not blind > accessible? For the sake of argument assume that ADA applies to commercial > websites - well even if it did, it seems to me that there would only be > grounds to sue if IE somehow could not be make blind-accessible. After all, > consider a porno website - blind people aren't consumers of pornographic > images and thus there is no access issue here, thus to make IE Most blind people aren't consumers of pornorgraphic images. You might find a blind person who wanted to gather some images to give to someone else, or something like that. > blind-accessible > it would seem that all that would be necessary is to attach a braille > terminal and get IE to work with it. Since blind people cannot by definition > consume images, all that a braille terminal need display on a website is the > textual information on the site. > > It may be cynical to say this but wouldn't it be cheaper if someone like > AOL was sued for access problems, for them to simply work with Microsoft and > release a blind-enabled IE than to redesign their many websites. Not only > would it be cheaper but also profitable. It's a lot more complicated than that. First, it's not at all clear that were the ADA to apply to commercial web sites that it would be acceptable to require tha you use IE, as opposed to any generally accepted solution. Braille terminals don't work very well with GUI interfaces, though there are drivers for many of the newer models that allow work with windows. The people I've known who used them have much prefered to use command line interface. Second, reading the text on a web site is often not enough to be able to use it. There are lots of things that flash UIs, which are utterly inaccesable by the blind, and more that have images for navigation buttons, with no, or useless, alt attributes. > > Thus, there is no possible way that even if a blind person has all possible > permutations of a LaserJet 4+ front panel menu memorized, plus all the > buttons, > that he or she can walk up to a HP Laserjet 4+ that he has never seen or used > before and select options via the front panel because he has no way of knowing > what menus will be displayed. > > Now, suppose I'm HP and operating under an ADA mandate, and I put out > documentation > for the HP Laserjet 4+ front panel on my website. Well, what possible use is > it to make this documentation blind-accessible, because a blind person cannot > use the front panel anyway even if they could read the docs, without > assistance > of a sighted person? "Hey, Ted, want to read me the documentation while I stand here in front of the printer, where I can't see the computer?" Have you never helped fix a problem over the phone, where the person doing the work doesn't have access to documentation, buy you do? I do this fairly regularly. To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-advocacy" in the body of the message
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