Text needs to be written for a reader. A little longer than my usual...

Text needs to be written for a reader.

The WAI site is written for a technical reader.
If we wish to stimulate mass market interest,
the site needs to meet the needs of this audience.

One way, is to demonstrate good accessibility, as well as write about it.

This means that it is important that visitors are not intimidated when they
visit the site.
The site has huge amounts of text most of which are irrelevant to any
particular enquiry.

Today i have a problem, http://www.peepo.com/accessible/bett/ does not
validate http://validator.w3.org/ due to an error in the way the keyword
'name' is being used.
However I cannot find out why.

I'd like to recommend that a set of simple pages with good accessible code
and well commented be posted.
How do we know if the code works in a given browser, surely that is part of
accessible?
I found that 'id' if simply replacing 'name' does not work with netscape.

A simple example would be a great help, and I recommend that code segments
work as a minimum with netscape, msie, and are w3 validated. It is just not
that easy.

It is more than a little important that we define and publish regularly,
what we mean by 'accessibility', it is certainly a moving goal.

Epilogue:
An indication of the current awareness of WAI and its intentions is
The website http://www.education-net.co.uk/ for the UK's premier education
and technology show.
It failed to provide a title or alt tags.

The Director Andy Wilkinson wrote:
Thank you for taking the time to offer your comments and feedback on the
BETT website.  We are constantly striving to update and improve our website
and I welcome your comments on accessibility for those with learning
difficulties or special needs.  As an exhibition which caters for this very
important branch of education, to have a website which doesn't is simply not
acceptable.  I will forward your comments to our web developers and will
make every effort to ensure that appropriate actions are undertaken for the
BETT 2001 website.

BETT has ~40 stalls for special needs ~5% of the total.





jay@peepo.com

Jonathan Chetwynd
Special needs teacher / web accessibility consultant
education and outreach working group member, web accessibility initiative,
W3C

Received on Monday, 17 January 2000 15:51:28 UTC