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Re: Guidelines are only half of the story: accessibilityproblems encountered by blind users on the web

for

From: Karlen Communications
Date: May 14, 2012 4:16AM

You wrote: "The only workable solution for this situation, is to merge
accessibility with the development of web technologies so that future
innovations already have an accessible platform from which to work. Then the
standards can be used to fine tune the accessibility of individual features
to maximize the user experiences for everyone."

I agree and one of the things I'm advocating for is the inclusion of
inclusive design in everything produced by teachers, faculty and students at
the primary, secondary and tertiary levels of education. Part of the problem
identified here is that we still think of inclusive education as having to
be "accommodated" for rather than "this is how we do it." We need to ensure
that all tools used in education are inclusive and that any document,
multimedia project or software/application created by any student is
inclusive in its design.

It is only then that we will stop the retro fit cycle for any digital
content or application, or service.

This in turn will drive the creation of more inclusive technologies and my
wishful thinking is that we'll look on this stage of digital evolution as a
"dark age."

http://karlencommunications.com/adobe/OntarioEducationAndAODA.pdf

As long as we have to "retrain" graduates to produce accessible digital
content and applications we'll be stuck in a retro fit cycle of
accommodation rather than one of inclusive design by default. People working
in the area of digital content and application design will continue to look
on accessibility as an add-on which is part of the current problem.

Cheers, Karen