Hi Mike, You wrote:
However, what I've noticed that you do not see are articles pushing the screen reader manufacturers to make more capable and intellegent readers for the browsers.....they seem to be able to do this for desktop applications (at least to a reasonable level). It seems that many of the efforts we are making (as well as the WSG) to enable accessibility are in fact disabling (and in many cases abandoning) the rich features on the net - this goes back to the whole "magazine article" site versus the "application" site - two different purposes, two different needs - both based on the same underlying technologies, and both need to be accessible.
IMO this is because physical access rules came after there were wheelchairs that had, in turn, been developed long after most of the physical structures we take for granted were standardized. In spite of that timeline, there were some things that had to be changed such as the provision of ramps. In web development, we are, then, figuratively, trying to build doorways and invent the wheelchair at much the same time. Not only is there a major emphasis on web sites doing a lot of the work on this but also our efforts may be obsolete as soon as the next generation of assisting software is introduced. That may be a discouraging prospect, but I think we still have to keep up as best as we can. -- Regards, Gene Falck [EMAIL PROTECTED] ****************************************************** The discussion list for http://webstandardsgroup.org/ See http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm for some hints on posting to the list & getting help ******************************************************
