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Re: Alternate Accessible Versions?

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From: Robinson, Norman B - Washington, DC
Date: Feb 7, 2005 6:10AM

Mike,

Thanks for taking the time to explain. I think I see my
disconnect.

I was making the assumption that ALL content was accessible, and
that the alternates were equally accessible, but tailored for a specific
purpose (such as printing or specific to an end-user's needs for
accessibility, targeting increased usability for that user.

Alternates are to be used only when the primary content *cannot*
be made accessible. Alternates should not be used as a method to avoid
having to build in accessibility into the primary web content.

Thanks for the discussion,

Norman



-----Original Message-----
From: michael.brockington [mailto: <EMAIL REMOVED> ]
Sent: Monday, February 07, 2005 5:12 AM
To: WebAIM Discussion List
Subject: Re: [WebAIM] Alternate Accessible Versions?



> -----Original Message-----
> From: norman.b.robinson [mailto: <EMAIL REMOVED> ]
> Sent: 04 February 2005 18:25
> Subject: [WebAIM] Alternate Accessible Versions?
>
> Regarding providing a simplified version for
> accessibility reasons, how does this open oneself up to
> charges of discrimination? For purposes of discussion, let us
> pretend we have one web page, one css style for printing, and
> one css style for accessibility. I'd really like to
> understand your perspective!
>

That example does not match what we were discussing, which was:
1. 'Normal' page, heavy in ads and styling.
2. Link to simpler page, either a different view of the same data,
parsed
output (ala Betsie) or simply a change of stylesheet. (A different page
as
far as the user is concerned.)

The example that you give appears to match what many people were
advocating,
which is two sets of styles, one for screen, and one for print, but with
both
loaded at the same time, so that the user only ever sees one page.


For the first case, regardless of whether the accessible version is in
some
way a separate version, or just a different style sheet, if you
advertise the
second version as being (more) accessible then you are automatically
proving
that you could have made the primary version accessible if you'd tried.
If
for any reason, a user has a problem reaching the alternate version then
you
are going to be in trouble.

The only exception that I can see to this is if you have a fully
accessible
intro page which gives the choice of two different versions, which then
act
as two independent sites.

If you advertise it as being a Print Version or something similar than
you
should be fine as long as the primary page meets minimum accessibility
requirements.

I am not a lawyer, but I have often heard it said that partially
acknowledging a Law is worse than ignoring it completely; the latter can
be
defended as ignorance whereas the former demonstrates awareness.
In other words if you have a set of pages that have 'A' rated
accessibility
then you are probably better off legally than making a set of 'AA' rated
pages and then having a set of 'AAA' pages as an alternative.

Hope that explains my opinion this time.
Mike