I think that billboards are a physical equivilent of email spam......see my point?
No. The comparison only makes sense when the billboards are placed on the road directly in front of you, and you have to stop your can, get out, move the billboard to the side, get back in your car to continue driving only to repeat the exercise minutes later. You can swop you car for a bulldozer, which comes with its own road-furniture remover -- but then you lose the convenience of the car, especially when parallel parking.
Since with spam, you have to wade through it and do something, otherwise you'll have an unusable inbox. The bull-dozer option is filtering
I still see a problem with the described methods though. That being, I don't think that the second-best search page selling product X would want a link running to the next-up competitor selling same product X.
Content providers don't have control of what happens to their content after it leaves their server (other than not publishing it to the web in the first place). A link between two similar products is to the benefit of the visitor. They can do comparisions between products, and make a better educated decision. This benefits the visitor - the people who make the Web a thriving community.
If a company doesn't want a link on "their" page to a competitors better product, then they can catch a wake-up and improve their product, instead of rallying against freedom of information (in this case links) and the freedom of user choice.
A company has no problems with being indexed by Google and ranked lower than their competition - so they should have no problem with this method of ranking.
You missed out the key word, transparency. If you have that then everything else will eventually work itself out.
As important a concept as transparency is (and I do agree that its key), its no good if the population at large do not understand the mechanisms sufficiently to determine if a transparent organisation is doing the right thing.
Show someone in the middle ages an F-18 Hornet and show them how the engine works. Transparent - yes. Understandable - no. They'll still think its a dragon breathing fire.
Education is a strong criteria for transparency to be a genuinely useful check and balance to good government.
Say what you like about Gates and Microsoft, but the fact remains that in dollar terms, he's done far more for worthy causes than the typical Open Source advocate
Dollar terms is only relevant in a market where software is sold. Open Source software is typically downloaded, not sold, so apportioning a dollar term on open source is ludicrous. Rather take the price of Microsoft software out of the equation first, and _then_ do a comparision.
IMO, Open Source software has done more for third world countries than Microsoft and their related foundations.
The "Digital Divide" is nothing but a fear of change
So you don't think its an expensive operation to set up, run and maintain a reliable communications infrastructure? You don't think that modern hardware is expensive in other parts of the world? Just exactly where is the investment in this infrastructure going to come from? Cancelling third world debt - don't you think there are other short-term problems are probably more important - like hunger, sanitation, electrification?
What you miss is that expenditure in the digital realm is an investment in education - something that has far-reaching and long-term advantages to an economy, but not something that solves problems overnight. Investing in an infrastructure to accommodate the ludicrous preconceptions of web designers doesn't help sort out the primary problems. But not investing in education keeps third world nations further and further behind the developed world.
With the cost of keeping a reliable infrastructure up-to-date constantly rising because of the dumbing down (hence more inaccessible content) philosophy of website designers, it is impossible for third-world countries to balance both concerns.
So it may seem to you its all about "fear of change", but in fact its a bleak choice between feeding the starving population and guaranteeing them no future, or investing in the future and tough luck to the starving population. Third world countries can't afford both investments - and I'm sure the US wouldn't be able to cope in the same situation either.
Yes, it would be great if everyone could benefit from technology, but just at the minute, it's not for everyone. And what's wrong with that?
The Web was developed during the early nineties, at the time we had 286 processors just going in to the 386 world. So all that's needed to surf the World Wide Web (as a knowledge base) is a 286 with a dial-up connection and a web browser.
The foundation of the Web hasn't changed. Neither has the user requirements. But website designers expect that visitors have the most recent version of Internet Explorer with cookies, javascript and Flash enabled.
So the barrier to entry on the World Wide Web has been increased by web designers. Recycled hardware is anathema to a web designer - even though this provides a better hardware platform than the top-range PC's at the start of the Web revolution.
This senseless raising of the bar has prevented a significant audience from using the Web to enrich their knowledge and better themselves.
Why has this barrier been continually heightened? The only discernible reason is that web designers believe their audience is stupid and lacks the attention span to read text, this leads to geegaw type sites with functionally useless animation effects and inaccessible content to cater for this attention deficit disorder that webdesigners proclaim their (largely US) audience suffers.
So by catering to the deficiencies of the US education system and its associated youth, this makes the barrier to using the web as a learning and education tool higher and higher with each passing year.
This dumbing down of the Internet content is what creates higher and higher barriers to entry, because more and more content is inaccessible to anything other than a modern browser running on modern hardware. And _there_ is your digital divide.
Everyone _can_ benefit from technology, but as long as webdesigners continue delivering websites that require the latest gadgets just to dumb down websites for deficient attentions, it futher reduces the international audience the website can cater for.
Accessibility is a cornerstone of reducing this ludicrous digital divide. But as long as webdesigners keep using the cartoon network as an example of how to create websites, they'll keep dumbing down their content, and keep making it more expensive for any new country to make use of the WWW.
Accessibility is about making a website more accessible to more people, in more locations, in more situations and on more devices. It is not limited to the ADA, and it is a common term for the concept on the World Wide Web. The W3 has as part of its website the WAI, which stands for Web Accessibility Initiative - so its quite obvious that accessibility cannot be limited to ADA without taking into account WAI.
If someone cannot access your content, the content is useless to them regardless of the presentation.
The argument doesn't fail because I'm saying we don't need laws that tell us how we need to design a site, we need people to employ the mechanics of capitalism
It is the failure of capitalism to address the needs and concerns of Americans with disabilities that lead to the adoption of ADA. If you don't need laws to correct the social imbalance of people with disabilities, ADA would not be required.
I just looked at their current website and the deeper pages all seem pretty Lynx friendly
Try purchasing one of their special offers. Select a departure and destination, then go on to the next page - the departure and destinations are wrong. Go back and select two other departure and destinations and go to the next page. The departures and destinations are wrong again.
I found this when testing their site when this story was first mentioned on Slashdot week before last. Can't actually buy a ticket using Lynx, so the special offer is inaccessible.
Pardon my ignorance, but how does one go about making a text web site available to the blind?
HTML is just a stream of text. Graphical browsers take that stream of text and render it in a graphical form based on certain styles. That's how sites appear in the browser.
Blind users using speech based browsers have browsers that take the stream of text and "read" it to the user using a text-to-speech converter.
Blind users using a refreshable braille display use a browser that takes the stream of text and converts it into braille patterns the user can feel.
In all three cases the same HTML page (correctly authored, valid and accessible) can be used for all three devices.
why not prompt the companies that develop these screen readers and such to make smarter devices that are capable of reading regular pages
Interesting that a webdesigner can't be bothered to do his job right and produce valid and accessible HTML, and expects developers of screen readers to do all the work for him at their expense. Get off your lazy backside and start doing your job properly.
Proper authoring of HTML allows the author to write a page of content and without duplication be accessible to all html-compliant browsers.
its bad enough that some people are still stuck maintaining source for ns & ie...
[HTML] People use these kludges because they can't "get the silly image in the right place" or want menus on their page.
HTML is not a presentation language, it is a markup lanugage designed to structure and add semantic information to content. HTML is not a presentation language. You want to put your silly images in the right place then use the right tools for the job. A Stylesheet styled for a screen is appropriate for putting your silly images in the right place. HTML is not a presentation language.
I can't believe that you actually think that most people want accessibility over presentation.
If content isn't accessible, its no use to anyone. I can't believe you can't understand that.
It really bugs me that there are folks who seem to want to "live in the old days" when "HTML was HTML and didn't have all these fancy-ass plugins". It's called progress folks.
No. Delivering inaccessible and invalid HTML markup is not progress. Its garbage.
What my question is, is why isn't everyone who is complaining about Flash working to create an accessible alternative?
You want to use Flash - you do the work making it accessible.
Why don't they create an alternative to HTML that makes it easy to create a well-designed (visually) site that is accesible to all users?
HTML and CSS gives you that. And the recommendations have been around since 1999, so there's no excuse for not having heard and learnt to use them correctly.
In the US are companies required to make any brochure they publish, available in braille? Are newspapers required to make any edition available in braille? Then why should webpages have to adapted to the blind?
Because a web page has none of the overheads and limitations of presenting independent and separate editions of material. Publishing a brochure, or newspaper, in normal print and braille requires two independant publications. This is not true for the Web - one correctly authored web page meets both criteria with minimal cost.
The screen readers *do* need to keep pace with technology. I'm not sure why that's flamebait.
Its probably flamebait because invalid and badly written HTML markup cannot constitute a technology. For the Web to be accessible, web designers have to make their content accessible and web browser manufacturers have to be able to render standards compliant content. So it takes effort from _both_ camps to make the web accessible. You have the obligation to make your content accessible and valid too - don't shirk it and expect someone else to do your job.
the use of type and graphics can be a powerful way to send a message. In some ways, it is far better to approach the problem this way then to write out lengthy copy that no one will read.
So, in your opinion, creating a graphic no one can see is better than accessible text that no one will read.
Nope. The difference is that "will" is about the visitor having the choice, and "can" is about you taking that choice away from the visitor.
We live in a capitalist environment, and we should allow the mechanics of capitalism work.
The ADA was originally created to address the failure of capitalism to cater for the needs of people in a non-discriminatory fashion. You previously had the priviledge of "allowing the mechanics of capitalism [to] work" and it failed.
Just because I didn't touch on your favorite vision of the internet
Your entire argument against accessibility on the World Wide Web boils down to "The Web is nothing more than the print medium and since its expensive to produce braille versions of books from dead trees it is impossible to do likewise with the web. Therefore accessibility is impossible."
The Web does not suffer from the cost factor associated with producing both plain and braille copies of books. Where the print industry requires two separate independently created versions of books - one plain and one braille. On the Web one website covers both requirements (assuming designer competance). This is where your attempted argument fails completely and the blinkers take over.
Book publishers are not required to release every book they publish in a braille format. Newspaper publishers are not required to release every edition they publish in braille. Not every TV show has close captioning.
Perhaps when you stop treating the Web medium as nothing more than an inferior version of the print and television medium, then you will realise that the Web has none of the limitations that the print and television industry has of full accessibility. And then you will realise how unrealistic your attempted analogy really is.
Remove those blinkers, and look at the Web like the independant medium it is. If you can't embrace the strengths and weaknesses of the Web, then you need to pursue a non-Internet career.
The point is to design things ONLY for the HTML 4 or later browsers, or you wind up with the complete lack of standards that caused this problem in the first palce.
No. Forget the browser. Properly written and valid HTML4.01 Strict is quite accessible browsers you consider isolating. That's because the W3 deliberately designed HTML to be backwards compatible.
I didn't buy an Xbox today, so I cost Microsoft $200? No, they (not taking in account wharehousing etc.) will only lose money when an Xbox is actually sold.
The X-box you didn't buy is losing them $200 just sitting there in the shelf, since thats what it would cost to produce it. When you buy it for $150, they recoup that $150, so are now only losing $50.
Microsoft don't lose when you buy an X-Box, they've already lost by producing a box at a cost more than the selling price. Whether you buy the box or not Microsoft are not getting the full value of the X-box back.
selling at a loss means they lose money on every sale.
Microsoft have already spent the money to build an X Box. Lets say it costs $200 per box. Now selling it for $150 would lose Microsoft $50 since they won't be able to recoup the cost of it. Buying an X-Box to "spite" Microsoft merely costs then $50 per box.
Now if you _don't_ buy the X-box, that particular item loses Microsoft the whole $200 - not the mere $50.
So the only time it is wise to buy an Xbox is if you actually have a use for it. You are just minimising their loss by buying an X-box to stick in the loft.
Slashdot Mirror
No. The comparison only makes sense when the billboards are placed on the road directly in front of you, and you have to stop your can, get out, move the billboard to the side, get back in your car to continue driving only to repeat the exercise minutes later. You can swop you car for a bulldozer, which comes with its own road-furniture remover -- but then you lose the convenience of the car, especially when parallel parking.
Since with spam, you have to wade through it and do something, otherwise you'll have an unusable inbox. The bull-dozer option is filtering
Content providers don't have control of what happens to their content after it leaves their server (other than not publishing it to the web in the first place). A link between two similar products is to the benefit of the visitor. They can do comparisions between products, and make a better educated decision. This benefits the visitor - the people who make the Web a thriving community.
If a company doesn't want a link on "their" page to a competitors better product, then they can catch a wake-up and improve their product, instead of rallying against freedom of information (in this case links) and the freedom of user choice.
A company has no problems with being indexed by Google and ranked lower than their competition - so they should have no problem with this method of ranking.
As important a concept as transparency is (and I do agree that its key), its no good if the population at large do not understand the mechanisms sufficiently to determine if a transparent organisation is doing the right thing.
Show someone in the middle ages an F-18 Hornet and show them how the engine works. Transparent - yes. Understandable - no. They'll still think its a dragon breathing fire.
Education is a strong criteria for transparency to be a genuinely useful check and balance to good government.
Dollar terms is only relevant in a market where software is sold. Open Source software is typically downloaded, not sold, so apportioning a dollar term on open source is ludicrous. Rather take the price of Microsoft software out of the equation first, and _then_ do a comparision.
IMO, Open Source software has done more for third world countries than Microsoft and their related foundations.
So you don't think its an expensive operation to set up, run and maintain a reliable communications infrastructure? You don't think that modern hardware is expensive in other parts of the world? Just exactly where is the investment in this infrastructure going to come from? Cancelling third world debt - don't you think there are other short-term problems are probably more important - like hunger, sanitation, electrification?
What you miss is that expenditure in the digital realm is an investment in education - something that has far-reaching and long-term advantages to an economy, but not something that solves problems overnight. Investing in an infrastructure to accommodate the ludicrous preconceptions of web designers doesn't help sort out the primary problems. But not investing in education keeps third world nations further and further behind the developed world.
With the cost of keeping a reliable infrastructure up-to-date constantly rising because of the dumbing down (hence more inaccessible content) philosophy of website designers, it is impossible for third-world countries to balance both concerns.
So it may seem to you its all about "fear of change", but in fact its a bleak choice between feeding the starving population and guaranteeing them no future, or investing in the future and tough luck to the starving population. Third world countries can't afford both investments - and I'm sure the US wouldn't be able to cope in the same situation either.
The Web was developed during the early nineties, at the time we had 286 processors just going in to the 386 world. So all that's needed to surf the World Wide Web (as a knowledge base) is a 286 with a dial-up connection and a web browser.
The foundation of the Web hasn't changed. Neither has the user requirements. But website designers expect that visitors have the most recent version of Internet Explorer with cookies, javascript and Flash enabled.
So the barrier to entry on the World Wide Web has been increased by web designers. Recycled hardware is anathema to a web designer - even though this provides a better hardware platform than the top-range PC's at the start of the Web revolution.
This senseless raising of the bar has prevented a significant audience from using the Web to enrich their knowledge and better themselves.
Why has this barrier been continually heightened? The only discernible reason is that web designers believe their audience is stupid and lacks the attention span to read text, this leads to geegaw type sites with functionally useless animation effects and inaccessible content to cater for this attention deficit disorder that webdesigners proclaim their (largely US) audience suffers.
So by catering to the deficiencies of the US education system and its associated youth, this makes the barrier to using the web as a learning and education tool higher and higher with each passing year.
This dumbing down of the Internet content is what creates higher and higher barriers to entry, because more and more content is inaccessible to anything other than a modern browser running on modern hardware. And _there_ is your digital divide.
Everyone _can_ benefit from technology, but as long as webdesigners continue delivering websites that require the latest gadgets just to dumb down websites for deficient attentions, it futher reduces the international audience the website can cater for.
Accessibility is a cornerstone of reducing this ludicrous digital divide. But as long as webdesigners keep using the cartoon network as an example of how to create websites, they'll keep dumbing down their content, and keep making it more expensive for any new country to make use of the WWW.
So just whack
...
$auth=false;
before
if ($pw='secret') { $auth=true; }
if ($auth) { do_advanced_stuff() }
So ignore the stylesheet. Valid HTML is accessible without the stylesheet. Accessibility before presentation.
Accessibility is about making a website more accessible to more people, in more locations, in more situations and on more devices. It is not limited to the ADA, and it is a common term for the concept on the World Wide Web. The W3 has as part of its website the WAI, which stands for Web Accessibility Initiative - so its quite obvious that accessibility cannot be limited to ADA without taking into account WAI.
If someone cannot access your content, the content is useless to them regardless of the presentation.
It is the failure of capitalism to address the needs and concerns of Americans with disabilities that lead to the adoption of ADA. If you don't need laws to correct the social imbalance of people with disabilities, ADA would not be required.
Try purchasing one of their special offers. Select a departure and destination, then go on to the next page - the departure and destinations are wrong. Go back and select two other departure and destinations and go to the next page. The departures and destinations are wrong again.
I found this when testing their site when this story was first mentioned on Slashdot week before last. Can't actually buy a ticket using Lynx, so the special offer is inaccessible.
HTML is just a stream of text. Graphical browsers take that stream of text and render it in a graphical form based on certain styles. That's how sites appear in the browser.
Blind users using speech based browsers have browsers that take the stream of text and "read" it to the user using a text-to-speech converter.
Blind users using a refreshable braille display use a browser that takes the stream of text and converts it into braille patterns the user can feel.
In all three cases the same HTML page (correctly authored, valid and accessible) can be used for all three devices.
Interesting that a webdesigner can't be bothered to do his job right and produce valid and accessible HTML, and expects developers of screen readers to do all the work for him at their expense. Get off your lazy backside and start doing your job properly.
Proper authoring of HTML allows the author to write a page of content and without duplication be accessible to all html-compliant browsers.
Sounds like they are lacking a clue.
HTML is not a presentation language, it is a markup lanugage designed to structure and add semantic information to content. HTML is not a presentation language. You want to put your silly images in the right place then use the right tools for the job. A Stylesheet styled for a screen is appropriate for putting your silly images in the right place. HTML is not a presentation language.
If content isn't accessible, its no use to anyone. I can't believe you can't understand that.
No. Delivering inaccessible and invalid HTML markup is not progress. Its garbage.
You want to use Flash - you do the work making it accessible.
HTML and CSS gives you that. And the recommendations have been around since 1999, so there's no excuse for not having heard and learnt to use them correctly.
Because a web page has none of the overheads and limitations of presenting independent and separate editions of material. Publishing a brochure, or newspaper, in normal print and braille requires two independant publications. This is not true for the Web - one correctly authored web page meets both criteria with minimal cost.
Its probably flamebait because invalid and badly written HTML markup cannot constitute a technology. For the Web to be accessible, web designers have to make their content accessible and web browser manufacturers have to be able to render standards compliant content. So it takes effort from _both_ camps to make the web accessible. You have the obligation to make your content accessible and valid too - don't shirk it and expect someone else to do your job.
So your basic argument against making websites offering a public service accessible is that you don't want blind people driving on the road.
I think that's silly because yesterday wasn't Sunday.
So, in your opinion, creating a graphic no one can see is better than accessible text that no one will read.
Nope. The difference is that "will" is about the visitor having the choice, and "can" is about you taking that choice away from the visitor.
The ADA was originally created to address the failure of capitalism to cater for the needs of people in a non-discriminatory fashion. You previously had the priviledge of "allowing the mechanics of capitalism [to] work" and it failed.
Your entire argument against accessibility on the World Wide Web boils down to "The Web is nothing more than the print medium and since its expensive to produce braille versions of books from dead trees it is impossible to do likewise with the web. Therefore accessibility is impossible."
The Web does not suffer from the cost factor associated with producing both plain and braille copies of books. Where the print industry requires two separate independently created versions of books - one plain and one braille. On the Web one website covers both requirements (assuming designer competance). This is where your attempted argument fails completely and the blinkers take over.
Perhaps when you stop treating the Web medium as nothing more than an inferior version of the print and television medium, then you will realise that the Web has none of the limitations that the print and television industry has of full accessibility. And then you will realise how unrealistic your attempted analogy really is.
Remove those blinkers, and look at the Web like the independant medium it is. If you can't embrace the strengths and weaknesses of the Web, then you need to pursue a non-Internet career.
No. Forget the browser. Properly written and valid HTML4.01 Strict is quite accessible browsers you consider isolating. That's because the W3 deliberately designed HTML to be backwards compatible.
The X-box you didn't buy is losing them $200 just sitting there in the shelf, since thats what it would cost to produce it. When you buy it for $150, they recoup that $150, so are now only losing $50.
Microsoft don't lose when you buy an X-Box, they've already lost by producing a box at a cost more than the selling price. Whether you buy the box or not Microsoft are not getting the full value of the X-box back.
Microsoft have already spent the money to build an X Box. Lets say it costs $200 per box. Now selling it for $150 would lose Microsoft $50 since they won't be able to recoup the cost of it. Buying an X-Box to "spite" Microsoft merely costs then $50 per box.
Now if you _don't_ buy the X-box, that particular item loses Microsoft the whole $200 - not the mere $50.
So the only time it is wise to buy an Xbox is if you actually have a use for it. You are just minimising their loss by buying an X-box to stick in the loft.