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Re: EC proposes rules to make government websites accessible for all

for

From: Chagnon | PubCom
Date: Dec 3, 2012 3:56PM

Birkir, you've made a good point.
People with disabilities do more than just read web documents.

In regular work settings for example, they also write, read, and edit MS
Word documents; crunch the numbers in Excel spreadsheets; create and review
Powerpoint presentations; and other software-related tasks. These are all
native files from which PDFs and websites are created.

So when we leave documents of all kinds out of the accessibility guidelines,
we prevent this community from being involved in creating these documents,
which is just as important as accessing and reading them. MS Office
documents should be just as accessible as PDFs and websites.

But more importantly, one action puts the author in an active position of
creating and distributing content, while the other has him in a passive
position of merely receiving the content.

To me, this is a huge oversight by the WC3, the WAI and their WCAG, and our
government accessibility agencies. They're only addressing part of the
issue.

-Bevi Chagnon
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