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Text Transcoders

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From: Tim Harshbarger
Date: Jan 18, 2007 10:10AM

I think most of us have difficulty with transcoders because they seem
like a "patch" rather than a solution to accessibility problems. Their
approach seems to be to address accessibility problems somewhere between
the web site and the user agent. I expect most of us would like to see
accessibility problems solved at either the web site or user agent end
of things.

Also, whether or not it is accurate, transcoders make it seem as though
accessibility is simply about providing text only pages. I am uncertain
text only pages work all that well for people with visual impairments.
I know they don't make it accessible to other groups.

I have heard people discuss the "separate but equal" argument. I think
what most often bothers me about separate accessible and inaccessible
pages is that I usually know that it would have been less work to fix
the inaccessible page than to create a separate accessible one. I
believe accessibility is good business--but it is always more difficult
to claim something is good business when someone makes some kind of
dopey design decision like that.

Tim