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Re: Question from client

for

From: Jukka K. Korpela
Date: Apr 15, 2005 3:49PM

On Fri, 15 Apr 2005, Glenda wrote:


>> "2. Could we say that the text only version will solve all the accesibility
>> issues of
>> our current website except those needed for people with cognotive
>> disabilities?"


A text only version is a serious accessibility _problem_, not a solution.
There's a note on this even in the WCAG 1.0 guidelines. Text only versions
mean serving second-class versions to second-class citizens. Even if some
text only version happens to be at the same level as the normal
version (updated as regularly etc.), users cannot possibly know this;
they assume that text only version has less content, is out of date,
is carelessly written and maintained (who'd bother for a 1 % of
customers?), etc., because they've observed such things.

The real question is what makes your client ask the question.

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