Sort of yes, and sort of no.
So: accessibility is in part a front-end issue. Tom's talking about
the layer of abstraction beyond that - the general architectural level
- and, by and large, he *is* promoting accessibility - accessibility
to data.
Accessibility is about more than blind people. It's about every form
of access to your web app. Accessibility is making it work in a text
only browser; it's about making it work on a slow line; it's about
making your service work for people who only use shared computers.
By making your normalised data available in more than just an HTML
page, you're increasing accessibility - developers no longer have to
screenscrape; sharing with other services becomes a doddle; Amazon
have increased the access to "buying products from them" by letting
anyone use their API.
From a *client-side* perspective, no, he doesn't, but that wasn't the
focus of his talk.
Regarding accessibility: it's the same as ever. Make it work for
everyone, make it comply with the law, and only *then* tart it up.
This is why I stress not designing for AJAX, but designing
plain-old-html, and then adding AJAX later. Otherwise you waste effort
making alternate or text-only versions of things.
Decent APIs make it easier to supply data in alternative formats,
which may make providing alternate accessible content (where you
absolutely have to) even easier.
You should never restrict functionality to certain user-agents.
Everything should be possible in all browsers and to all clients, with
very few exceptions. So that means transcripts for podcasts;
transcripts for video; sites they don't rely on AJAX; etc, etc, etc.
Accessibility for Web 2.0 is exactly the same as it's always been -
it's just all the new-fangled toys, especially AJAX, act as red
herrings to making accessibility work.
t.
Quoting Jonathan Chetwynd <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>:
Native to a Web of Data
thanks for that Peter, and Kim for pointing it up!
what fun, with some clarity, but...
Does Tom fail to mention accessibility? or was it just me.
cheers
~:"
Jonathan Chetwynd
with 254 validation errors on the homepage, yahoo.com may have a way to
go.....
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