Will Eolas Browser verdict snare others?

[JAMESICUS]

Refer to .....

http://news.com.com/2100-1032-5063444.html

James Pickering

Pickering Pages
http://www.jp29.org/

[Isofarro]

No.
--
Iso.
FAQs: http://html-faq.com http://alt-html.org http://allmyfaqs.com/
Recommended Hosting: http://www.affordablehost.com/
Web Design Tutorial: http://www.sitepoint.com/article/1010

[Alan J. Flavell]

On Sun, Sep 21, JAMESICUS inscribed on the eternal scroll:

Refer to .....

http://news.com.com/2100-1032-5063444.html

On a point of order, alt="IMAGE TEXT HERE" seems to be an open
invitation to a lawsuit under disability access legislation, no?

[Mark Jones]

"Alan J. Flavell" <fl*****@mail.cern.ch> wrote in message
news:Pi*******************************@lxplus100.c ern.ch...

On Sun, Sep 21, JAMESICUS inscribed on the eternal scroll:

Refer to .....

http://news.com.com/2100-1032-5063444.html

On a point of order, alt="IMAGE TEXT HERE" seems to be an open
invitation to a lawsuit under disability access legislation, no?

No. Commercial sites are not covered by this in the
way that a government site would be.

[Stan Brown]

In article <Pi*******************************@lxplus100.cern. ch> in
comp.infosystems.www.authoring.html, Alan J. Flavell
<fl*****@mail.cern.ch> wrote:

On Sun, Sep 21, JAMESICUS inscribed on the eternal scroll:

Refer to .....

http://news.com.com/2100-1032-5063444.html

On a point of order, alt="IMAGE TEXT HERE" seems to be an open
invitation to a lawsuit under disability access legislation, no?

Maybe in a civilized country. US and state government Web sites seem
to make no effort at all to provide accessible pages.

--
Stan Brown, Oak Road Systems, Cortland County, New York, USA
http://OakRoadSystems.com/
HTML 4.01 spec: http://www.w3.org/TR/html401/
validator: http://validator.w3.org/
CSS 2 spec: http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-CSS2/
2.1 changes: http://www.w3.org/TR/CSS21/changes.html
validator: http://jigsaw.w3.org/css-validator/

[EightNineThree]

"Stan Brown" <th************@fastmail.fm> wrote in message
news:MP***********************@news.odyssey.net...

In article <Pi*******************************@lxplus100.cern. ch> in
comp.infosystems.www.authoring.html, Alan J. Flavell
<fl*****@mail.cern.ch> wrote:

On Sun, Sep 21, JAMESICUS inscribed on the eternal scroll:

Refer to .....

http://news.com.com/2100-1032-5063444.html

On a point of order, alt="IMAGE TEXT HERE" seems to be an open
invitation to a lawsuit under disability access legislation, no?

Maybe in a civilized country. US and state government Web sites seem
to make no effort at all to provide accessible pages.

Oh, but they say they do! ROFL!
First and foremost, ADA Section 508 is a joke compared to WAI.
Then you have US Gov't sites that typically are pretty far from what you & I
would call "accessible", but are passed off as such because Section 508
basically says "If you can't do it right, provide a plain text version"
which is what most resort to.
--
Karl Core

Charles Sweeney says my sig is fine as it is.

[Alan J. Flavell]

On Sun, 21 Sep 2003, Stan Brown wrote:

on comp.infosystems.www.authoring.html, Alan J. Flavell

On a point of order, alt="IMAGE TEXT HERE" seems to be an open
invitation to a lawsuit under disability access legislation, no?

Maybe in a civilized country. US and state government Web sites seem
to make no effort at all to provide accessible pages.

I have here the local paperwork for electoral registration - we fill
this in each year to confirm qualification for voting under the
various provisions (local council, parliamentary, EU etc.).

In addition to English, the paperwork includes Urdu, Punjabi, Arabic
and Chinese.

If they can do that for something that's inherently _in_accessible,
one does really have to wonder at the logic of taking something that
was designed to be inherently accessible (in a somewhat different
sense, for sure, but I think the analogy is fair), and turn it into
what a Lynx user would find at http://www.glasgow.gov.uk/

[Chris Morris]

"Mark Jones" <sp**@block.com> writes:

"Alan J. Flavell" <fl*****@mail.cern.ch> wrote in message
news:Pi*******************************@lxplus100.c ern.ch...

On Sun, Sep 21, JAMESICUS inscribed on the eternal scroll:

Refer to .....

http://news.com.com/2100-1032-5063444.html

On a point of order, alt="IMAGE TEXT HERE" seems to be an open
invitation to a lawsuit under disability access legislation, no?

No. Commercial sites are not covered by this in the
way that a government site would be.

Well, depends on what country you're in. Certainly in UK and
Australia commercial sites are believed to be covered. Section 508
may only apply to the US public sector but that doesn't mean that the
Americans with Disabilities Act can't be applied on its own.

--
Chris

[Eric Jarvis]

Alan J. Flavell wrote:

On Sun, 21 Sep 2003, Stan Brown wrote:

on comp.infosystems.www.authoring.html, Alan J. Flavell

On a point of order, alt="IMAGE TEXT HERE" seems to be an open
invitation to a lawsuit under disability access legislation, no?

Maybe in a civilized country. US and state government Web sites seem
to make no effort at all to provide accessible pages.

I have here the local paperwork for electoral registration - we fill
this in each year to confirm qualification for voting under the
various provisions (local council, parliamentary, EU etc.).

In addition to English, the paperwork includes Urdu, Punjabi, Arabic
and Chinese.

If they can do that for something that's inherently _in_accessible,
one does really have to wonder at the logic of taking something that
was designed to be inherently accessible (in a somewhat different
sense, for sure, but I think the analogy is fair), and turn it into
what a Lynx user would find at http://www.glasgow.gov.uk/

I had a good rant about this on another group earlier today...the gist
being that since the web is relatively new, and generally only the
designers know how it works accessibility is dealt with like this:

the question of accessibility is raised...everyone says it is a good
thing...the designer is asked what it involves...they say it will involve
lots of cost and extra effort...any attempt to make the site more
accessible is dropped until extra money can be found...and nobody
elsewhere in the organisation knows to tell the designer that they are
talking total rubbish

this WILL change as the web becomes more mature as a technology and more
designers are working for managers that know enough to argue

--
eric
www.ericjarvis.co.uk
"Hey Lord don't ask me questions
There ain't no answer in me"

[Alan J. Flavell]

On Mon, 22 Sep 2003, Eric Jarvis wrote:

Alan J. Flavell wrote:

If they can do that for something that's inherently _in_accessible,
one does really have to wonder at the logic of taking something that
was designed to be inherently accessible (in a somewhat different
sense, for sure, but I think the analogy is fair), and turn it into
what a Lynx user would find at http://www.glasgow.gov.uk/
I had a good rant about this on another group earlier today...

Gosh, so you did, and I see many of the "usual suspects" were there
too, who I know from other groups. Not quite the style of
uk.rec.sheds, but...

Oh, and didn't I spot you on alt.humor.best-of-usenet recently? ;-)
the question of accessibility is raised...everyone says it is a good
thing...the designer is asked what it involves...they say it will involve
lots of cost and extra effort..
For them it probably would! They've created some sizeable hurdles,
and now they're trying to work out how to evade having to build
footbridges over them; but they still won't be accessible in a 'chair.
The result would still be worse than if they hadn't erected those
hurdles in the first place.
.any attempt to make the site more
accessible is dropped until extra money can be found...and nobody
elsewhere in the organisation knows to tell the designer that they are
talking total rubbish
Indeed.
this WILL change as the web becomes more mature as a technology and more
designers are working for managers that know enough to argue

There are some remarkably clue-resistant folks around. If I didn't
think they were dumb, then I'd have to believe they were deliberately
discriminatory. Sigh.

[Barry Pearson]

Alan J. Flavell wrote:
[snip]

There are some remarkably clue-resistant folks around. If I didn't
think they were dumb, then I'd have to believe they were deliberately
discriminatory. Sigh.

Hm! I also think that much of the material around on how to go about it leaves
a lot to be desired.

You surely recognise that I am not deliberately discriminatory. But, while
trying to improve the accessibility of my web sites, at times I've been
presented with challenges that have made me wonder not so much whether it is
worth it, but whether it is even possible!

One of my early challenges was "Bobby". It presented me with such a list of
issues for any page I showed it that I couldn't see any path towards enabling
a disabled person ever to access those pages. But, frankly, Bobby was lying to
me. It was actually telling me of a set of incremental problems, not of a
fundamental barrier. (Does the fact that certain web pages specify in the HTML
that buttons are 175 pixels wide prevent disabled people accessing those
pages? Does the fact that there is only white space between some links stop
readers making sense of those links - when I know that the IBM Home Page
Reader can speak those links OK? Let's have a sense of reality!)

I now see accessibility as a "programme", not simply as a "standard".
Achieving accessibility is a "process", not "leaping over a hurdle". However
bad your pages are, some disabled people may be able to access them. However
good your pages are, some fully-able people will have trouble. Make a priority
list, then tackle the problems one by one. It may take a year to get 80% of
the way towards "Bobby", but don't assume that every disabled person "sees"
things the same way.

All my web sites now have an "accessibility" page that discusses what I have
done and what I am doing. They also provide an email address for suggestions.
I'll add problems as I find them, and tick them off as I solve them. Being
able to record progress avoids the impotence of not actually achieving any
particular standard. (My web pages will never be accessible to all disabled
people. Nor to all abled people!)

Examples:

http://www.childsupportanalysis.co.u...essibility.htm

http://www.barry.pearson.name/web_si...essibility.htm

http://www.birdsandanimals.info/web_...essibility.htm

--
Barry Pearson
http://www.Barry.Pearson.name/photography/
http://www.BirdsAndAnimals.info/
http://www.ChildSupportAnalysis.co.uk/

[Eric Jarvis]

Barry Pearson wrote:

I now see accessibility as a "programme", not simply as a "standard".
Achieving accessibility is a "process", not "leaping over a hurdle". However
bad your pages are, some disabled people may be able to access them. However
good your pages are, some fully-able people will have trouble. Make a priority
list, then tackle the problems one by one. It may take a year to get 80% of
the way towards "Bobby", but don't assume that every disabled person "sees"
things the same way.

spot on

accessibility isn't about a checklist of minimum standards...it's all
about attitude, intention and priorities

--
eric
www.ericjarvis.co.uk
"live fast, die only if strictly necessary"

[Alan J. Flavell]

On Tue, 23 Sep 2003, Barry Pearson wrote:

You surely recognise that I am not deliberately discriminatory.
I surely do. I have the impression you're doing signficantly more
than the acceptable minimum, and in a situation where your material,
being inherently visual, rates as potentially problematical.
One of my early challenges was "Bobby".
I've said it before and I'll say it again. Bobby made a useful stab
at evaluating web pages in the light of the WAI guidelines, and as
such offers itself as a potentially useful tool for the designer. It's
suboptimal in some areas in terms of the actual execution of the idea,
but for what it was intended to be, it made a good start. However,
what it is not - and cannot be - is a legally watertight evaluation of
whether a page is or is not accessible. Using it in isolation as some
kind of final arbiter, and dumbly shovelling more and yet more junk
into a page until Bobby stops complaining, is NO WAY to achieve
accessibility, and I don't suppose any of Bobby's designers would ever
claim it.

Just as you'd never become an advanced driver by simply having an
advanced driving examiner sit in the car with you and tick off points
on a chart - you have to understand what you're doing, before those
points on the chart can mean anything to you. The same with Bobby's
ratings (or Nick Kew's, for that matter...).
I now see accessibility as a "programme", not simply as a "standard".

Fully agree.

all the best