Perhaps one of your questions below illustrates what might indeed be
the harm.
Seek to design something "universally," and all the individual skill goes
out. However you end up with the idea at least that the universal should
apply. It is kind of like the insane idea that "everyone uses jaws," so
if it works with it, it works for everyone." or everyone reads braille
etc.
Yet time and time again, just yesterday for me in fact, I could still do
something in lynx beyond the ability of a jaws user, with my knowing
perfectly well that many factors outside of a screen reader impact
access, and that such should not be a defining factor.
yet some jaws user manages to get recordings for the blind to define its
site access by jaws use, and as a result the site cannot be used by those
using other setups for the most part. The danger indeed of trying to
create something universally.
Will google use this as an excuse to remove their really accessible text
options, because a small and highly individualized sample of this indeed
very diverse group of individuals said it worked for them in windows?
One would hope not. It is an interesting exercise, and again as you
wisely noted, not something one has to use. as long as Google sees it as
such too, and not a firm solution, just one tool of many, no harm done
indeed.
My two cents,
Karen
On Thu, 20 Jul 2006, Kafka's Daytime wrote:
On Jul 20, 2006, at 7:37 PM, David Poehlman wrote:
Further ghetoizing us is google now suddenly trying too become the
authority on what is good for us.
This would probably more true if you *had* to use the Google accessibility
search. Perhaps one could look at it as just one more resource - a help,
perhaps, if you're interested - for a particular search - in winnowing out
pages which do not follow guidelines for b/vi accessibility.
I'n not sure it's 'ghettoizing' anymore than efforts to standardize
accessibility (Section 508 etc.) are 'ghettoizing'.
At the very least, it's certainly an interesting experiment (note: still
under the Google "labs" umbrella). What do we mean exactly when we say
something is or is not accessible to the blind and vi (keeping in mind that
this is a diverse community)? How can we design web resources universally?
What do the Google accessibility search results really mean? etc., etc. Good
for discussion and bringing attention, no? Hard for me to see where the harm
could be.
What do you think?
Joe
