Amar, you have to keep accessibility in perspective. While we think a lot about accessibility, to the majority of site owners, the word 'accessibility' means 'catering to blind and disabled users'. This is obviously a gross simplification but that's how a lot of site owners think of it.
Now if you're the Marketing Director of a large company, and have lots of choices to make, you look at the number of blind and disabled users and decide how much of your effort can go towards catering to them. In the majority of cases, they'll decide that when pages come up for redesign they'll build in accessibility and otherwise, its not worth spending money on. It's the same logic that we developers use when deciding if we're going to put effort into making our pages work well in every single browser or whether we're going to select a group of them and the rest take their chances. I know that there is a lot more to standards and accessibility than caring for blind and disabled users, but that's what the word 'accessibility' means to most site owners, like it or not. To Macromedia, their primary concern is making a profit, and building their market base in the development and design industries. Looking after accessibility issues is on the list, but a long way down from number one. Cheers Mike Kear Windsor, NSW, Australia AFP Webworks http://afpwebworks.com .com,.net,.org domains from AUD$20/Year -----Original Message----- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Amit Karmakar Sent: Saturday, 18 September 2004 3:06 PM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: [WSG] Re: Free Editors I was at a Seminar conducted late last year when Bob Regan was down. http://www.markme.com/accessibility/ That page is the same today as it was then. I did hear the same rant too but sorry to say (while I have nothing against Macromdeia) there focus is not so much accessibility or comparitively less to - lets say, promote Breeze, Contribute, Flex yada yada.. I am not saying they are bad but I have heard too many promises being made. Although, its good to see that Flash has advanced in that content. And again this is not to berate Macromedia. I am sure they are doing a lot of work in related fields. But my take is if they were really that much more into accessibility and really concerned they may have been a smidgen more thoughtful about the top level pages at least. ****************************************************** The discussion list for http://webstandardsgroup.org/ Proud presenters of Web Essentials 04 http://we04.com/ Web standards, accessibility, inspiration, knowledge To be held in Sydney, September 30 and October 1, 2004 See http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm for some hints on posting to the list & getting help ******************************************************
