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Re: Text Transcoders

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From: John Foliot - Stanford Online Accessibility Program
Date: Jan 18, 2007 10:40AM

Tim Harshbarger wrote:
> 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.

I, like many here, have similar feelings about transcoders like LIFT and
Betsie (BBC), for mostly the same reasons.

However, a few years ago, I was involved in a project at another major
university, who were grappling with a huge amount of legacy web content.
While the University in question was setting aggressive goals for accessible
development moving forward, the issue of that legacy data made the
acquisition of LIFT an option to improve access to all those years
of...well, "non-accessible-aware" development - yes, it was a work-around,
but it was also an effort to address a real problem that was compounded by
the cost of other "conversion" methods. Built into the process was a server
log review, to try and identify if certain documents were seeing significant
enough traffic to warrant proper conversion. Everyone involved knew it was
a compromise, but in life, compromise generally wins the day.

So, as a tool, it's a tool... It fills a need when it exists, but it is not
a "final solution". Rather, it is a quick means to address a real problem.

My $0.02

JF