


From: <goliver@accease.com>
Date: Sun, 03 Mar 2002 01:45:34 -0800 (PST)
Cc: w3c-wai-gl@w3.org
Message-Id: <20020303014536.7868.c000-h009.c000.wm@mail.accease.com.criticalpath.net>

I don't like the idea of different versions for
different groups for the following reasons

1. Resource Discovery
How do we ensure that the 'right group' gets to the
'right version'?
If there are links from the default rendering what are
they going to say?

'Link to Text Only Version?'
Well, how do I know if I am 'supposed' to use the text
only version?

'Link for Blind and Visually Impaired People?'
This doesn't do it for me, it sounds discriminatory.
Also see 5.

What's to stop people landing (on a search from Google
for example) on the 'wrong' version. What do they do
then? How do they know they are on the 'wrong' version?

2. The skills aren't there
In my experience so far, there simply is not the
awareness of what the needs are of different 'groups of
disabled people', to create an accessible site for a
specific group.
The process of producing two or more version will be
expensive enough without all the potential rework to
fix up stuff.

3. More than one verion means less testing and lower
This has been my experience so far. Site quality is
lower, resouces get stretched, stuff gets missed.

4. No site will ever be fully accessible.
There seems to be inherent in this argument somewhere
that we can make a site 100% accessible.
I think that it is helpful to look at the bricks and
mortar world in this regard. In NZ anyway an accessible
door (in the regulations) has a handle on it which can
be opened by 'most' disabled people.
A 100% accessible door would be one of these Star Trek
things that simply opened automatically (optional swish
swish sound) but they are not specified in the
regulations (they are too expensive).
These regulation were pioneered by disabled people. A
pragmatic ('non 100%') response to a real world problem.

5. Disabled People want the same solution as everyone
OK, so I only have a small sample size, but that's the
message I get.

In short I believe that accessible design is universal


Checkpoint 4.S.1
 If you are serving content in different forms to
different users to
comply with the guidelines, then at least one version
must meet all the
guidelines (with which compliance is asserted) and that
form must be
complete and up to date:Success Criteria
    1) that version provides accessible forms of all
the content that is
provided in the default presentation 
    2) that version can be obtained from visiting the
same URI 
as default
    4) that version can be easily selected by users
using technologies
that area accessible under these guidelines  (e.g. you
don't have to
operate an inaccessible technology in order to request
the accessible
form of the content)
NOTE: The reason that one version must be used to meet
all the
guidelines instead of using different versions to meet
guidelines is to allow access by people having multiple
disabilities --
and because authors may not understand which
combinations of guidelines
must be used together to provide access. Gregg

AccEase Ltd : Making on-line information accessible
Phone : +64 9 846 6995
Email : goliver@accease.com
Received on Sunday, 3 March 2002 04:45:39 GMT
