Re: Personalized web pages

aloha, scott!

again, i must apologize for not having checked out your demo pages, due to an
utter lack of opportunity...  please rest assured that it is at the very top of
my list of things to do online!

my point is simply this:  if you provide structure, into which personalized
content is dropped -- either via a template driven database-based program such
as ColdFusion or via XML in combination with RDF -- there is no quote
tailorization for the blind unquote necessary -- merely tailorization for the
individual (who in this case, just happens to be blind)...

there is an old saying that a blind man's poison is another man's food -- a saw
which, having had a wealth of experience working with individuals with widely
varying visual acuity -- i would amend to one blind person's panacea is
another's poison...

tailor content for individuals, and let them take it from there, but do not
tailor the presentation of that content solely on the basis of their perceived
disability...  i, having been fully sighted for my first twenty years, process
information in a vastly different manner than someone who has never had any
usable vision...  my inability to read braille due to neuropathy in my
fingertips, also has had a profound effect on how i process information...  so,
although i operate in a non-visual modality, my experience of that modality is
vastly different from jason white's or dave poehlman's or janina sajka's, to
name but 3 blind users who immediately spring to mind...

i want information tailored to my tastes as an individual, not to as a member
of an amorphous (and, potentially apocryphal) class of users...

gregory.

Received on Thursday, 16 December 1999 11:51:59 UTC