WCAG doesn't seem appropriate to me, as this is certainly more an application than a web page
so does this mean we should use a standard like ATAG (authoring tools accessibility guidlines http://www.w3.org/TR/WAI-AUTOOLS/) or look to other software based accessibility guidlines?
The problem with ATAG is that while a lot of people have looked in depth at WCAG it is much harder to find practical infromation on ATAG. Most of the things we do to accomadate WCAG are based upon lessons learned from delving into picking apart the practical implications of the guidlines. I think this must be one of the next issues tackled on the web, as tools like gmail, moveabletype, blogger, flickr... become more prevalant. But at the moment these tools are still in their beginning stages, and really can't be expected to do all the R&D involved, I think this is a community issue.
thoughts, opinions...?
s
Andreas Boehmer [Addictive Media] wrote:
-----Original Message-----
From: Gary Menzel [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Tuesday, 15 February 2005 3:55 PM
To: wsg@webstandardsgroup.org
Subject: Re: [WSG] GMail... Terrible!
I'll repeat myself - just so that people know I am serious about this......
There are plenty of accesible free webmail clients available.
Explan to me why GMail has to make it's product accessible to everyone?
To continue evolving into a society that treats everybody equally, there is no reason why companies should not TRY to make their websites as accessible as possible, considering the little amount of effort required. I can understand if companies do not fulfil all the different priorities, but we can at least try, hey?
And quoting the laws about discrimination wont cut it. They have the
right to shoot themselves in the foot and lose all the users who can't
access their FREE site because of all the other alternatives.
I don't even have to quote legal issues - it's a matter of moral. A lot of websites do not fulfil accessibility guidelines, but that is mostly because they don't know much about them. The big difference is that GMail should know better. I am sure they have got enough people around that could quickly and easily make the website more accessible.
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