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RE: FW: HTML - <abbr> and <acronym> settings

for

From: Karl Groves
Date: Mar 23, 2006 10:30AM


> To demonstrate this problem, I was recently at a major
> disability conference and had a discussion with the
> development lead for one of the three major screen readers. I
> brought up a bug that is in screen reader, and has been for
> some time. In reply to my comments, he replied, and these are
> just about his exact words, "It's not a bug unless it works
> correctly in the other two screen readers and not in ours.
> Document that it's a feature of those two screen readers and
> not ours, and then we'll fix it."
> Am I crazy for being a little frustrated by this attitude?
>

Crazy? Nope. You have every right to be frustrated, not just at the
attitude, but at the entire notion that W3C recommendations aren't followed
properly by products designed for use on the Web.

But look at it from their point of view. I believe everyone on this list
already understands this: Making further changes to a product will require
time and money. The "cost" of that time and money is not just related to
that which is required to make the changes, but also adds to the increased
delay and cost of developing other products.

In other words, investing 100 hours to add a feature not only costs 100
hours of time and 100 x hourly rate for developers, but it delays other
products by 100 hours and piggybacks the labor cost on top of all other
products under development.

Don't get me wrong. I think they should have gotten it right the first time.
But since that's obviously not the case, we shouldn't expect someone to snap
their fingers and it'll get fixed. Their job is to make money. If the
diversion funds & manpower doesn't add to the bottom line, it is
understandable that they'd be disinclined to be in a hurry for new features
& bug fixes.


Karl L. Groves