WebAIM - Web Accessibility In Mind

E-mail List Archives

Browser Detection, True Accessibility, and CC/PP

for

From: Kynn Bartlett
Date: Aug 1, 2003 6:56PM


On Friday, August 1, 2003, at 09:22 AM, Jared Smith wrote:

> Because many screen readers are supplements to existing Web browsers
> (typically Internet Explorer), you really cannot detect the existence
> of a screen reader on the server side, as the header requests indicate
> that it is really a standard Web browser. And I agree with Karl -
> detecting a screen reader to present different content does little for
> true accessibility.

Hold on a sec -- 'true accessibility' means "whether or not some person
can use this Web site" where that person is whoever's accessing the
site at the time.

Detecting a screen reader to present different -- not content, but
presentation of that content -- is indeed accessible, and it is simply
an application of allowing the user to specify their choices and
displaying an appropriate rendition of the content.

This does a _lot_ for 'true accessibility', if it can be done reliably
and consistently -- as well as respectful of the user's expressed
desires. This is a good thing, not a bad thing, so let's not be
too quick to discard the technique as not being helpful.

What we need is the following:

1. Browsers that implement transmission of CC/PP profiles.

2. Accessibility APIs that support passing of CC/PP profiles
between "user agent components" (ATs, browsers, etc) so
they can be consolidated in the browsers.

3. Assistive technologies which use such an API to communicate
their capabilities (in a self-identifying manner) to the
CC/PP-enabled browser.

4. Servers which support the reading of CC/PP profiles.

5. Techniques for _presentation_ restructuring based on
CC/PP profiles.

#4 is being worked on by the CC/PP folks, as I understand things.
#5 is what Edapta [RIP] and others have worked on (it's my
personal area of interest). #1, #2, and #3 require vendor
cooperation -- it may require begging and pleading with the
open source community if Microsoft (or Apple) are not willing
to do the hard work themselves on getting this set up.

--Kynn

--
Kynn Bartlett < <EMAIL REMOVED> > http://kynn.com
Chief Technologist, Idyll Mountain http://idyllmtn.com
Shock & Awe Blog http://shock-awe.info
Author, CSS in 24 Hours http://cssin24hours.com
Inland Anti-Empire Blog http://inlandantiempire.org



----
To subscribe, unsubscribe, or view list archives,
visit http://www.webaim.org/discussion/