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Re: LIFT Transcoder being pimped

for

From: John Hamman
Date: Aug 5, 2004 9:46AM


We do both for multiple reasons. For the majority of businesses and sites,
accessibility is not easy, NOT just because of the changing of current code
but because of marketing and flow control of the site. If we were JUST to
look at the factor of changing the code with accessibility, many commercial
sites would probably grab it as a low hanging fruit. BUT the problem is
marketing involved. Not only would you have to design the page to be
accessible but to look good and fill the requirements of the sites target
audience. That's where it becomes difficult. So what we do is make both a
text only and make the front end accessible. The page content is pulled from
a xml file that is fed to an style sheet that will format it for text only
or not. That way there is no loss in upkeep. So the text only shows the
exact same content as the non text only no matter what. Plus it allows the
user to choose his or her own pace on the site. And to top it off. It allows
more marketing opportunities. Higher keyword indexing.
-just my 2 cents.
john

-----Original Message-----
From: inekemaa [mailto: <EMAIL REMOVED> ]
Sent: Thursday, August 05, 2004 11:38 AM
To: WebAIM Discussion List
Subject: Re: [WebAIM] LIFT Transcoder being pimped


Hello John,

>What we do is, create a site that has >text only versioning but also
the site
>is accessible without the text-only. XML >and XSL are great for this.

http://www.dresden.de has also an only-textversion, but when you compare
both versions side by side, you can notice very clearly that in the
only-text version two important links are missing:
stadsentwicklung und umwelt;
suche und service.

In other sites I saw that some links had different names in both
versions and all text-versions were missing some pieces of text, also
information that is available in the usual version.

For me a good reason to object a text-only version for a whole site.

And why is a text-version needed when the whole site is accessible? That
requires more work for maintaining than needed.. and also unneeded
costs..And the risk that after some time 2 not-equivalent versions will
exist as mentioned earlier in this mail

Greetings
Ineke van der Maat

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