"So yes, the main issue is the OS itself and how accessible it is and  
how technology is implemented. This is squarely on Apple and  
Microsoft. After that however is the very legitimate issue of how  
browser implement standards and their versions of web technologies to  
make them accessible. And with this issue, one has to understand that  
without 100% consistency and compliance on the part of the browser  
makers, designers and developers of web based technologies have  
little to no chance of ever really addressing the accessibility  
properly."

I have to disagree. Even if there had been complete and well implemented
standards for all the elements that go into AJAX (which their weren't)
reader developers would still not have been able to anticipate how
innovative developers put AJAX to use. And who knows what the next AJAX will
be...

(Andrei, I think you misunderstood my point #1 below. I was saying that
readers lag behind for the same *reasons* that utilities lag behind -- not
in any way *because* utilities lag behind.)

Joseph Selbie
Founder, CEO Tristream
Web Application Design
http://www.tristream.com

-----Original Message-----
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
[mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Andrei
Herasimchuk
Sent: Sunday, October 07, 2007 11:51 AM
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: Re: [IxDA Discuss] Target.com Loses Accessibility Law Suit


On Oct 7, 2007, at 11:04 AM, Joseph Selbie wrote:

> 1.) The reader developers are in the position of having to catch up  
> with new
> OS and browser releases all the time. For example I recently  
> started using
> Vista. But still, 9 months since the OS was released, many of my  
> favorite
> utility programs have not made versions that will work on Vista.

What the reader developers create does not rely on utilities. That's  
an unrelated problem and has little to do with you larger point, I  
think.

> 2.) The reader developers are in the position of having to catch up  
> with
> innovative uses of the OS and browsers. New ways of exploiting the  
> DOM are
> being created all the time. Thousands of developers are expanding  
> the number
> of ways you can do things using the basic tools available -- and  
> sometimes
> those new ways blow right past what a reader is likely to be able  
> to do.

This is true. But the reader developers also don't implement  
standards and rendering in the same way, which is a separate problem  
but one that further exacerbates how accessibility is implemented  
into web products and services.

So yes, the main issue is the OS itself and how accessible it is and  
how technology is implemented. This is squarely on Apple and  
Microsoft. After that however is the very legitimate issue of how  
browser implement standards and their versions of web technologies to  
make them accessible. And with this issue, one has to understand that  
without 100% consistency and compliance on the part of the browser  
makers, designers and developers of web based technologies have  
little to no chance of ever really addressing the accessibility  
properly.

So a business like Target.com is three levels deep and two level  
removed from the technology itself needed to make compliance a true  
reality, and has basically *no* control or input into the base  
technologies themselves. Why again are they the target of this  
lawsuit? (No pun intended.)

-- 
Andrei Herasimchuk

Principal, Involution Studios
innovating the digital world

e. [EMAIL PROTECTED]
c. +1 408 306 6422


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