From owner-freebsd-advocacy Tue Nov 6 22:56:34 2001 Delivered-To: freebsd-advocacy@freebsd.org Received: from guru.mired.org (okc-65-31-203-60.mmcable.com [65.31.203.60]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with SMTP id B92E337B417 for ; Tue, 6 Nov 2001 22:56:26 -0800 (PST) Received: (qmail 84284 invoked by uid 100); 7 Nov 2001 06:56:15 -0000 From: Mike Meyer MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Message-ID: <15336.56079.519166.80672@guru.mired.org> Date: Wed, 7 Nov 2001 00:56:15 -0600 To: "Ted Mittelstaedt" Cc: , Subject: RE: NatWest? no thanks In-Reply-To: <000001c1674e$6587e780$1401a8c0@tedm.placo.com> References: <15336.16983.259208.90433@guru.mired.org> <000001c1674e$6587e780$1401a8c0@tedm.placo.com> X-Mailer: VM 6.90 under 21.1 (patch 14) "Cuyahoga Valley" XEmacs Lucid X-face: "5Mnwy%?j>IIV\)A=):rjWL~NB2aH[}Yq8Z=u~vJ`"(,&SiLvbbz2W`;h9L,Yg`+vb1>RG% *h+%X^n0EZd>TM8_IB;a8F?(Fb"lw'IgCoyM.[Lg#r\ Sender: owner-freebsd-advocacy@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk List-ID: List-Archive: (Web Archive) List-Help: (List Instructions) List-Subscribe: List-Unsubscribe: X-Loop: FreeBSD.ORG Ted Mittelstaedt types: > >> Then how about instead of mandating ADA compliance, you mandate EITHER > >> ADA compliance, or W3C compliance? I'd rather see ADA compliance mandate > >> a website comply with a public standard than with it's own set of special > >> rules. > >By that, I take it you mean the W3C's accessibility guidelines that > >can be found at . > >I'd say no. The federal guidelines - used for federal government sites > >- don't mandate what technology be used; they mandate that there there > >be accessible options available for all disabled - not just blind - > >users. The W3C guidelines tell you how to do that using the technology > >available at the time they were written. Would you rather have "Your > >site must have accessability options", or "every img that carries > >content must have a meaningful alt"? > The problem with sentence 1 (which I assume is the fed guidelines) is > that it's too easy to slime your way out of it. The web designer/site > owner could argue that since there's a web browser that has a braille > driver out there that he doesen't have to bother changing his coding > as long is his site renders in some fashion on the braille browser. This > ignores that because of crummy html the rendering is a much more > unpleasant experience for the blind person than for the sighted person. Sentence one is not the fed guideline, but my interpretation of a bunch of the collapsed together. The guidelines proper can be found at . As for the web site experiences, that changes time the viewer changes a browser setting. That's life on the web, and nothing can change it. One of the things the government tried to do was *not* limit the technology that designers could use to make information available for the temporarily abled. The critical idea behind the ADA is not that the experience should be the same for everyone, no matter how abled, but that everyone should have the same information available. This can be done using one site and the W3C's mechanisms for alternatives, or it can be done with a text-only site. > Although it's been a while since I've looked at w3c, since it's a standard > it surely is worthless if not updated to stay current with current technology. > Forcing sites to stay compliant with it to remain OK under ADA gives a > yardstick > that is very definite, there's no wiggle room for the designer to slime out of > it. If the designers have a beef then they can take it up with the standards > body and have a public discussion that settles things rather than some > backroom > sealed deal (which is how the government seems to like to handle things) The part of Section 508 that covers the web are based on the W3C WAI. Unless the W3C is made part of the government, it really can't write regulations. The regulatory agency responsible for electronic access has adopted the WAI rules. That's as close as you can legally come to what you want. > I liken this to the ADA requirements for ramps for building access. The > standard requires a ramp, but the codes also specify how wide and the degree > of incline of the ramp. You cannot for example put in a 45 degree ramp that > extends 6 feet and is 6 inches wide and claim that it makes the building > wheelchair accessible. So why would you advocate that the websites that fall > under > ADA requirements be given more wide lattitude than ADA gives for building > access? Because they are working in a medium that's a bit more pliable than concrete. The rules - again, adopted from the W3Cs WAI - are designed to insure that the site will be accessible to any standards-compliant browser. They don't say "every IMG must have an ALT"; they say "every non-text element must have a text equivalent" (and 15 other rules, some of which aren't quite so general). The first is tied to the technology. The second one isn't - which was my point. http://www.mired.org/home/mwm/ Q: How do you make the gods laugh? A: Tell them your plans. To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-advocacy" in the body of the message