Thanks Garry for the support and the cogent comments. At the risk of
prolonging this debate, I think its important to share them with the
link list.
Regards
Doug
-----Original Message-----
From: Garry Putland [mailto:gputland@educationau.edu.au]
Sent: Saturday, 2 March 2002 11:31 AM
To: Doug Jacquier; Phil Palmer; Wallace Mcgee; Kate Dibben; Garry
Putland; Ruth Morris (E-mail); brabham@ignitiondesign.com.au; Leila
Henderson; Mike Vasey
Cc: Wayne Houlden (E-mail)
Subject: FW: FW: [LINK] WCIT2002 Community Forum
Hi Doug and everyone else,
I think we need to put such criticism into perspective. If you take a
look at the requirements (legally) as I understand it, we are required
to meet at least W3C Priority One requirements or at least demonstrate
we have tried to address the issue of accessibility. I did raise this at
one of our meetings in relation to the flash that was required on the
WCIT homepage. Its unfortunate that we are all copping this criticism,
when as I understand it the Janison Tools at least meet this.
However, the 'singers' in this group are saying that we should meet at
least Priority 3 of the W3C guidelines and in many cases to go further
to meet the requirements of such software as iCab (a Mac software used
by is it 3 or 4 people??? in Australia) and text browsers!! (an
interesting note is that I thought the world of visual literacy was
challenging the notion of text literacy which our kids actually
expect!!!)
The issue of accessibility is one that needs to be treated seriously,
and developers need to better understand the issues in relation to
accessibility. However, to expect to meet all of the browsers, likes and
dis-likes of people (eg turning java script off) is an almost impossible
task. Our intention at education.au limited is to raise the bar in
relation to accessibility but to do this practically in future versions
of the software.
I think Doug you have handled this impeccably and it is important not to
be defensive but to try to understand the complexities in relation to
accessibility. (I know I have been finding this difficult because of the
vague legal requirements and the voracity of feeling by those who want
us to reach the pinnacle tomorrow.) I expect we will hear more of this
in the future. We will be placing accessibility guidelines and advice on
the EdNA Online website in the near future. If there is any consolation,
the current EdNA Online site which meets legal requirements (ie W3C
priority 1) has been subjected to criticism of this type. My response
has been to accept that we are all on a learning curve and in our next
iteration or sooner we will rectify the issues where possible. One easy
way to do this is to specify this in our requirements to developers.
Cheers,
Garry Putland
Project Director EdNA Online
education.au limited
178 Fullarton Road,
DULWICH SA 5065
Ph : 0883343229
Fax: 0883343211
Mob: 0401145076
-----Original Message-----
From: Jan Whitaker [mailto:jwhit@primenet.com]
Sent: Saturday, 2 March 2002 8:14 AM
To: Tony Barry
Cc: Doug Jacquier; Link; Phil Palmer; Wallace Mcgee; Kate Dibben;
Garry
Putland; Ruth Morris (E-mail); brabham@ignitiondesign.com.au; Leila
Henderson; Mike Vasey
Subject: Re: FW: [LINK] WCIT2002 Community Forum
At 01:45 PM 1/03/02 +1100, Tony Barry wrote:
>And that is one of the reasons I use a text browser for my first scan
>of a
>page. If I see enough to interest me I proceed. If I see too little to
>indicate what the site is or how to navigate I make a judgement about
the
>competence of the designers and go elsewhere.
This has been an interesting thread. It appears that there is lots of
interest for good things to happen in website designs, particularly for
forums like the WCIT. It is fortunate that someone from the forum
itself happened to be on link in order to find this out, including the
problems associated. Unfortunately, the site itself, VERY ironically,
is for an IT conference and in its own design does not allow for this
type of feedback! One would have thought that if anyone would/could/must
'get it right', it would be this sort of effort, 'world first' [which
isn't exactly true except perhaps for this particular event] or not.
Just another winge, since this seems to be the place. :-) Why such a
light text on the page? There is so little contrast that the eye strain
must be higher than normal and certainly not optimum for viewing. And
sadly, the size is also a problem and the way it's coded, the text size
control on the desktop is defeated. And finally, I figured out why it
takes so long to download, at least potentially why. I had a look at
the forum archives instead of going to through the subscription, logging
in, etc. process. If scripts are disallowed, you can't see the actual
messages, just the message title/author [a problem in itself if your
browser doesn't support js]. But if you do turn on js, you get the whole
thing downloaded, all messages, so that when you click on the title, the
message immediately appears. Sounds good, but I also notice lots of
suspicious backchat from may machine back to the server [why??!] and if
there was any real amount of content in here, it could take a LONG time
to get that info through. Once again, a design that is to the advantage
perhaps of the designer, but certainly not for the end user. One of the
advantages of seeing these various implementations, and seeing the name
of the software driving it, in this case Janison Solutions Toolbox,
makes anyone else who may be designing these sorts of 'services' in the
future to be more discerning in their choices of vendors, programmers,
and 'features'. Sorta like the CBA criticism of the industry as part of
the program about the IT industry if you get my drift.....[exposure].
Doug has figured that out and responded as best I'm sure he could at
this stage. Jan [who supports these types of online efforts
wholeheartedly and has done a few pretty successful ones without the
extra zingers that seem to be continuing to appear regardless of the
criticism by the user community; does everyone remember the early
problems with frames?]
JLWhitaker Associates
Melbourne, Victoria, Australia
jwhit@primenet.com -- http://www.primenet.com/~jwhit/whitentr.htm
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