On Sun, Feb 24, 2008 at 8:04 PM, Steve Green <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > "Accessibility, though in a sense is trivially easy once you know it" > > That would not even be true if it was possible to 'know it', which it isn't. > Accessibility isn't just a bunch of facts that you have to learn, and it's > not just about compliance with the WCAG checkpoints. That's a good starting > point but it only tells you if a website *should* be accessible. > > To assess whether a website *actually is* accessible you need to understand > how people will perceive and interact with the content. That requires > understanding of user agents, hardware platforms, assistive technologies and > all kinds of disabilities. It also requires the ability to balance the > conflicting needs of different stakeholders. It requires us to keep learning > and reassessing our viewpoints as all these factors change and new > technologies and design techniques emerge. > > Maybe it is trivial when you know all that, but I don't think any of us know > enough to start thinking that way. > > Steve
Here, I used the phrase "in a sense" perhaps, to try to capture more meaning than it was capable of holding. There are, as you have pointed out two ways of "knowing" accessibility. You can know how to build your site such that it "should" be accessable according to the standards which assume that all user agents are following the standards. Then also there's the more difficult and expensive kind of accessability where you actually test whether your target users can really use the site or not in reality rather than just the theoretical scenario that the standards describe. When I said "in a sense" I meant the first kind. The kind that is trivially easy once you know all the techniques and standards. It is particularly easy in comparison to the second kind. The first kind is still seen as difficult and costly to many developers who may not even be aware of the second kind. Nevertheless, "accessibility" of the first kind is worth doing, and is trivially easy once you know how to do it. Accessibility of the second kind is also worth doing. But in a world where many developer cultures have not even come to grips with accessibility of the first kind, accessibility of the second kind is a tough sell. ******************************************************************* List Guidelines: http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm Unsubscribe: http://webstandardsgroup.org/join/unsubscribe.cfm Help: [EMAIL PROTECTED] *******************************************************************
