By refering to text only, I was talking about pages that make heavy use of image maps. These do not translate well for the converter programs that are used. Maybe not exactly text only, but just simply adding standard hrefs to the bottom of the page. It is amazing how many pages only offer image maps as their only means of site navigation. Alt is nice. But that doesn't help if you can't figure out how to go further.
Get this straight, this IS NOT a tort suit. Money has nothing to do with this. So all of you bozo's who want to pull the lawyer card can just go jump in a pile of AOL CD's! This is simply a suit to force a company to comply with a law. No money! Debate if the law is good or bad all you want; but don't whine about money because this has nothing to do with it! The Spanish Inquisiton was more tollerant then some of the folks here. I put this question to all of you, why SHOULDN'T the blind have access to AOL? I doubt I will get an intelligent answer to this question. I'll sum up the standard answers from/.'s on this right here: 1) Because 2) They suck! 3) They use MS. 4) They use AOL! [DUH] 5) They should have used Linux. 6) Government sucks! 7) You suck!
Ok now that we have those out of they way, can anyone come up with an inteligent answer to this question?
Settle down folks. I think you all are making way too much of this. Essentially, this is a suit to make AOL come up with more text oriented pages instead of graphic laden ones. IE, essentially make a page compatible with older versions of programs like Lynx. Yes, this does cause a problem with a lot of fancier features that use fancy interfaces. Most of the blind who do surf use text to braille or synth speech converters. All they are asking for is some text pages that allow them to surf, listen, buy, etc like everyone else can. Is this easy to do, probably not; but there is no reason why it can't be done. [Of course, I don't see them sueing doubleclick to make their ads ADA compliant] I know there are times when I would prefer a text only screen because the graphics laden ones are so slow. AOL will settle out of court by making a bunch of text only interfaces. That is pretty much the only reason they are being sued. Besides, would AOL do anything if it wasn't sued? [BTW, I doubt/. needs to worry about being sued. It's layout appears that it would probably be compatible, for the most part, with the converters.
I don't like to have to deal with government BS anymore than anybody else. However, this guy's speech is not being impacted other than he has to explain who he is in a very limited way.
Kind of ironic that you point this out when posting as anonymous coward. The biggest problem with campaign finance laws is that they are designed to restrict many kinds of free speech. Anonymous speech is one of the truest forms of free speech. By attaching a bogus dollar amount saying that the cost of a system constitutes a person becoming a PAC is ludicrous. The legal paperwork for PAC's are royal pain in the butt for the average Joe who just wants a place to voice his or her opinion.
IMHO, this is a far worse attempt at censorship than trying to get rid of porn sites. If, as a citizen of the United States, I am not allowed to express my own opinion with out fear of violating some arcane campaign law or having to take the time to fill out several government forms that have no true significance to anything I am doing, the Constitution of this country is as valuable as toilet paper! Where is there a difference between getting a sign and walking in front of city hall protesting some action and calling for someone else to be elected or voted out or impeached versus throwing same information up on the internet for all to see? Most people would surely protest having to fill out forms just to carry a protest sign in front of a government building. If I choose to carry my protest sign on the internet, I should be able to do so with all of the individual rights of free speech that I am entitled to as a citizen of the United States of America!
The only problem with that logic is that DSL is not anywhere near available everywhere and is certainly not standardized and easy enough for average Joe Blow user. Many telco's don't even seem to want to bother with DSL. I live in a metro area and have been hearing that it is coming for ten months now. Every time I call the telco, they say, 'only three more months.' Telcos have nothing on M$ when it comes to vaporware!
Of course, another item to come back with is if we are going to be charged for a data call, should we be able to be guaranteed a data quality line. Try to get a telco to look at your phone line when you are having modem problems and first thing you will hear is that these are 'voice quality lines' and not designed for data. I have been dealing with the phone companies long enough to know that any money they get will NOT, in any way, ever make it back to improving the network infrastructure or improve the pathetic service that is provided when there is a problem. They don't even give good service for dedicated data lines that companies pay through the nose for anymore.
To find any silver lining in this is to be incredibly naive. The telcos only want to pad their bottom line. With all of the mergers and acquisition currently happening in the industry, service and expanded services are going to get a lot worse.
They have one on display at KSC. But it would be almost impossible to get flight ready. Plus, the old pads were converted for the shuttles and the VAB building was converted too.
I guess one of the problems is that these devices are designed for US 120V power systems. I'm guessing the can work on the European power systems. Anyone know for sure?
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By refering to text only, I was talking about pages that make heavy use of image maps. These do not translate well for the converter programs that are used. Maybe not exactly text only, but just simply adding standard hrefs to the bottom of the page. It is amazing how many pages only offer image maps as their only means of site navigation. Alt is nice. But that doesn't help if you can't figure out how to go further.
Get this straight, this IS NOT a tort suit. Money has nothing to do with this. So all of you bozo's who want to pull the lawyer card can just go jump in a pile of AOL CD's! This is simply a suit to force a company to comply with a law. No money! Debate if the law is good or bad all you want; but don't whine about money because this has nothing to do with it! The Spanish Inquisiton was more tollerant then some of the folks here. I put this question to all of you, why SHOULDN'T the blind have access to AOL? I doubt I will get an intelligent answer to this question. I'll sum up the standard answers from /.'s on this right here:
1) Because
2) They suck!
3) They use MS.
4) They use AOL! [DUH]
5) They should have used Linux.
6) Government sucks!
7) You suck!
Ok now that we have those out of they way, can anyone come up with an inteligent answer to this question?
Settle down folks. I think you all are making way too much of this. Essentially, this is a suit to make AOL come up with more text oriented pages instead of graphic laden ones. IE, essentially make a page compatible with older versions of programs like Lynx. Yes, this does cause a problem with a lot of fancier features that use fancy interfaces. Most of the blind who do surf use text to braille or synth speech converters. All they are asking for is some text pages that allow them to surf, listen, buy, etc like everyone else can. Is this easy to do, probably not; but there is no reason why it can't be done. [Of course, I don't see them sueing doubleclick to make their ads ADA compliant] I know there are times when I would prefer a text only screen because the graphics laden ones are so slow. AOL will settle out of court by making a bunch of text only interfaces. That is pretty much the only reason they are being sued. Besides, would AOL do anything if it wasn't sued? [BTW, I doubt /. needs to worry about being sued. It's layout appears that it would probably be compatible, for the most part, with the converters.
I don't like to have to deal with government BS anymore than anybody else. However, this guy's speech is not being impacted other than he has to explain who he is in a very limited way.
Kind of ironic that you point this out when posting as anonymous coward. The biggest problem with campaign finance laws is that they are designed to restrict many kinds of free speech. Anonymous speech is one of the truest forms of free speech. By attaching a bogus dollar amount saying that the cost of a system constitutes a person becoming a PAC is ludicrous. The legal paperwork for PAC's are royal pain in the butt for the average Joe who just wants a place to voice his or her opinion.
IMHO, this is a far worse attempt at censorship than trying to get rid of porn sites. If, as a citizen of the United States, I am not allowed to express my own opinion with out fear of violating some arcane campaign law or having to take the time to fill out several government forms that have no true significance to anything I am doing, the Constitution of this country is as valuable as toilet paper! Where is there a difference between getting a sign and walking in front of city hall protesting some action and calling for someone else to be elected or voted out or impeached versus throwing same information up on the internet for all to see? Most people would surely protest having to fill out forms just to carry a protest sign in front of a government building. If I choose to carry my protest sign on the internet, I should be able to do so with all of the individual rights of free speech that I am entitled to as a citizen of the United States of America!
The only problem with that logic is that DSL is not anywhere near available everywhere and is certainly not standardized and easy enough for average Joe Blow user. Many telco's don't even seem to want to bother with DSL. I live in a metro area and have been hearing that it is coming for ten months now. Every time I call the telco, they say, 'only three more months.' Telcos have nothing on M$ when it comes to vaporware!
Of course, another item to come back with is if we are going to be charged for a data call, should we be able to be guaranteed a data quality line. Try to get a telco to look at your phone line when you are having modem problems and first thing you will hear is that these are 'voice quality lines' and not designed for data. I have been dealing with the phone companies long enough to know that any money they get will NOT, in any way, ever make it back to improving the network infrastructure or improve the pathetic service that is provided when there is a problem. They don't even give good service for dedicated data lines that companies pay through the nose for anymore.
To find any silver lining in this is to be incredibly naive. The telcos only want to pad their bottom line. With all of the mergers and acquisition currently happening in the industry, service and expanded services are going to get a lot worse.
They have one on display at KSC. But it would be almost impossible to get flight ready. Plus, the old pads were converted for the shuttles and the VAB building was converted too.
I guess one of the problems is that these devices are designed for US 120V power systems. I'm guessing the can work on the European power systems. Anyone know for sure?