Accessibility is/should be a way of life for anyone building websites. I don't care to hear the inevitable "but that's the way the client wants it" - does a doctor give a patient morphine for a burst appendix, because that's what the patient wants, for the pain to go away? No. If you consider yourself a web professional, you have a duty (in my view) to point out to the client that an inaccessible website is the wrong thing to do.
It's a persistent misconception that accessibility has anything to do with the design. We all have to educate clients on this point and hope the message gets out there. I periodically wish Jakob Nielsen's site wasn't so ugly, since some people think that's an exemplar site... The architectural analogy highlights the key problem in the web industry: there's no accreditation, no real accountability. A few lawsuits do not take the place of real enforcement of standards. If a building doesn't meet the building code, then heads roll and the building is changed to meet requirements. If a website is inaccessible, the people who did it are rarely punished in any form. Anyway... I believe as web professionals we should build to standards whether the client asks for/understands it or not. If that means we charge more than a tag soup+tables shop, so be it. You get what you pay for in print, same goes for web. It's a personal integrity thing. I guess if someone offered me millions to hack out tables, I'd probably cave... but it really would have to be a *lot* of money :) ...and even then I'd try to talk them out of tables. Someone's suggestion about a legal waiver isn't such a bad idea - that might at least get their attention! cheers, Ben -- --- <http://www.200ok.com.au/> --- The future has arrived; it's just not --- evenly distributed. - William Gibson ******************************************************************* List Guidelines: http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm Unsubscribe: http://webstandardsgroup.org/join/unsubscribe.cfm Help: [EMAIL PROTECTED] *******************************************************************
