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RE: GIS and accessibility - follow-up

for

From: julian.rickards@ndm.gov.on.ca
Date: Jun 3, 2003 1:39PM

Hi Ed:

Are your parents still living there? Are they taking precautions against
SARS? BTW, I was raised in Mississauga but am now living in Sudbury (~4hrs
north).

If you had a look at LIO and CLAIMaps, you will see that they are both
Java-based and geospatial search tools. Although simple Java-applets may be
made accessible by one method or another (eg. alternate pages), the complex
ones used in these two applications may be too difficult. Secondly, a person
cannot draw an outline of a search area if they cannot see it and for that
reason, the managers and developers chose to apply for exemption. There may
be other ways of performing the same types of searches - type the
coordinates or townships of the search area. That could work. The results of
a search are currently visual but could possibly be a text-based report.
Both the entry of coordinate or township details and a text-based results
page could be made accessible but I don't believe that either part of these
applications.

Despite the fact that the ministry I work for has developed these
applications, it is not normally part of my duties that I need to use them
so my familiarity with them is weak. I just ran a test of CLAIMaps and you
can type in the name of a township but the result is visual - there are no
text-based results. The complex polygons of mining claims would be very
difficult to convert to text.

LIO again is Java-based and geospatial and depending on the type of
information you are looking for, may provide text-based results - in my
test, I searched for publications which then provided the publications that
cover my selected area. The results page comes up through another window
generated by another application we have called ERMES.

In summary, both LIO and CLAIMaps do have some features that could be made
accessible but for the most part, the functionality of both rely on visual
cues. For this reason, the developers requested for exemption from ODA.

HTH,

Jules


A question: The ODA has an exemption clause which simply states that if it
is not technically feasible to make a sub-web ODA-compliant, it may be
exempted. What effort if any do you make to permit someone with
disabilities to gain access to the information on those pages?

You were the only person to respond to my post.
By the way, my parents were born in Toronto and Hamilton.


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