Tom,
'Not getting sued' seems to be the other popular reason to address
accessibility. 'Doing the right thing' is way down there unfortunately.
Definitely a case there for the link between accessibility and mobile on
Flash too - I wrote a short piece on that a while back.
http://www.centralquestion.com/archives/2005/06/desktop_accessi.html
I'd like to quote on you on my blog - but these archives aren't public
on the web - do you mind if I move some of your words onto the web?
Alex,
http://www.centralquestion.com/flauntit/
-----Original Message-----
From: Tom Worthington [mailto:[log in to unmask]]
Sent: 05 October 2005 04:55
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: Documents now public
At 02:27 AM 10/5/2005, Al Gilman wrote:
>... As Rich said, it's best to start with the Roadmap. ...
Thanks. I guess "Rich" is Richard Schwerdtfeger and "the Roadmap" is his
"Dynamic Accessible Web Content Roadmap", W3C Working Draft, September
23,
2005 <http://www.w3.org/WAI/PF/roadmap/>.
>... In their present state, our drafts *may* be penetrable by people
who,
>like your students, have already bruised their knuckles on another such
>application. ... And if you can interest your students in spending some
>time with these materials, we would very much like to hear from them.
My students are at the top university in Australia, in a building with
some
of the cleverest IT people in the world (they go on to places like IBM
research labs, Google and Microsoft Research Labs). But I have a lot of
trouble convincing them that accessibility is worthy of their attention.
The roadmap will help as it clearly explains what it wants to do and
then
has some technical stuff they will like.
But I have mostly given up trying to convince anyone that accessibility
is
worth doing because it will help those with a disability. I give a
homily
on accessibility to the undergraduate and postgraduate students
<http://www.tomw.net.au/2005/wd/testing.html>. But it is far more
effective
when dealing with business people to say it will enable applications to
work on mobile devices used by high net worth customers. Even with a
humanitarian application for emergency management I have suggested using
accessibility features for efficiency
<http://www.tomw.net.au/2005/wd/sahana.html>.
In the case of the researchers and students, I could see them being
interested in a flexible user interface for the robot submarines tested
in
a tank outside my window
<http://nieis.anu.edu.au/news/news_smallsub.html>
or for the swarms of robot aircraft down the road at the Defence
Department
<http://www.tomw.net.au/blog/2005/09/last-day-of-searcc-2005-in-sydney.h
tml>.
Now I know of the roadmap I can tell them about it. But you need to tell
us
all clearly what you are doing and point us to the useful documents.
Tom Worthington FACS HLM [log in to unmask] Ph: 0419 496150
Director, Tomw Communications Pty Ltd ABN: 17 088 714 309
PO Box 13, Belconnen ACT 2617 http://www.tomw.net.au/
Director, ACS Communications Tech Board http://www.acs.org.au/ctb/
Visiting Fellow, ANU Blog: http://www.tomw.net.au/blog/atom.xml
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