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Re: LIFT Transcoder being pimped

for

From: Jukka K. Korpela
Date: Aug 5, 2004 8:12AM

On Thu, 5 Aug 2004, tim.beadle wrote:

> I found this article on The Register [0], which was a republish from
> it-analysis.com. The closing para made me laugh:
>
> "In an ideal world LIFT text transcoder, or an equivalent, should become
> a standard part of any website." [1]

It goes on to say that authors should add a "text only" button to all
pages, to use the transcoder. This alone is suspicious: "text only"
buttons (or links) indicate accessibility _problems_, not solutions. The
user never knows whether he would get second-class (trimmed, outdated,
etc.) content, since "text only" buttons have so often be used for that.

> No, in an ideal world web sites would be coded correctly and all markup,
> presentation and behaviour layers kept separate, leading to sites that
> serve all users regardless of ability, platform or browser.

Well, yes, but being accessible in text-only mode too (which is just one
though important, aspect of accessibility) is not trivial to reach even if
you have got the principles right. Sometimes you have images that have
essential content that cannot be expressed in words, or at least not in
the few words that you can practically put into an alt="..." attribute.
But naturally no "text transcoder" can help to deal with a complicated
drawing, or with a photograph, or an animation.

--
Jukka "Yucca" Korpela, http://www.cs.tut.fi/~jkorpela/