I do know Leonie Watson and several of her colleagues at Nomensa personally, and they are highly regarded here in the UK. Leonie was the chairman of the Association of Accessibility Professionals - http://www.accessibilityprofessionals.org, an organisation that promotes accessibility and web standards.
I suspect that whatever she wrote has been selectively edited to support the rest of the article (this has happened to me more than once). Steve Green Director Test Partners Ltd / First Accessibility www.testpartners.co.uk www.accessibility.co.uk Mark Harris <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > It's a horrible wet Sunday so... > > Christian Montoya wrote: > > > It's a really poor article altogether. > Agreed > > > The writer > Katie Ledger is a *presenter* not a journalist of any depth or note > AFAIK, so that explains the lack of research and understanding. > > > only interviewed *1* person, not an expert, and clearly someone with their > own bias. > To be fair, Leonie Watson is blind herself [1] and seems at least as > well qualified to comment on accessibility as most I've encountered. I > don't know her personally (I live on the other side of the world) but > I'm willing to accept her opinions as valid in her experience. I don't > think you can dismiss her completely. > > > > The > > writer talked about *1* website, a completely unique example which > > took *a lot* of money and work to accomplish. > > That's a key problem with the article - it makes accessibility sound > really hard and something you have to get experts in for. > > > > The writer didn't do her > > research about CSS, and never mentioned section 508, valid HTML or any > > of the other HTML-based accessibility/well-formedness measures. > > Writer != journo, as mentioned earlier. But you can't really knock a > British writer for not mentioning an artificial American "measure" that > only applies to American Government agencies. I agree about the lack of > research though. > > > The > > writer also mentioned *1* court case, and made it seem like only *1* > > person has a problem with Target. That's just not how you write > > articles. Throwing together all this barely related information > > results in an article that is just about useless to the reader. > > Click is a television program. Television is, by nature, superficial. > > My take on the piece (one of about 3 on the site) is that someone at the > BBC said "we really should do something about this accessibility thing. > Who knows anyone?" and from there the trail lead to Nomensa and Watson. > Alex and Tony muttered about agendas and I do suspect that Nomensa has > an agenda to do with Flash - it does appear to be the only technology > mentioned on their site, and a quick search for "CSS" and "Cascading > Style Sheets" turns up nothing. I suspect they put out a press release > or something which someone handed to Ledger. > > I'm not sure what they expect to achieve with that agenda though... > > BTW They did a report [2] into accessibility of UK Central govt sites > which is interesting, although Jan 2005 is an age away now. It's not > downloadable from their website, but you can sneak it out of google ;-) [3]. > > > [1] http://www.nomensa.com/about/key-people/leonie-watson.html > [2] > http://www.nomensa.com/resources/research/web-accessibility-in-central-government.html > [3] > http://www.iabf.or.kr/lib/common/download.asp?path=pds&file=Nomensa_Central_Government_Report_Jan_2005.pdf > > > Cheers > > mark > > > ******************************************************************* > List Guidelines: http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm > Unsubscribe: http://webstandardsgroup.org/join/unsubscribe.cfm > Help: [EMAIL PROTECTED] > ******************************************************************* > > ******************************************************************* List Guidelines: http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm Unsubscribe: http://webstandardsgroup.org/join/unsubscribe.cfm Help: [EMAIL PROTECTED] *******************************************************************
