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Re: Text Transcoders

for

From: Jim Allan
Date: Jan 18, 2007 10:50AM

I know of one person who has done research/user testing on the effectiveness
of transcoders, Giorgio Brajnik from Italy. (At one time Giorgio was the
lead research scientist at Usablenet, currently he is a Computer Science
professor). Check out the various papers based on user testing.

http://www.dimi.uniud.it/giorgio/publications.html

also http://www.csun.edu/cod/conf/2005/proceedings/2180.htm

Jim

> -----Original Message-----
> From: <EMAIL REMOVED>
> [mailto: <EMAIL REMOVED> ]On Behalf Of Tim
> Harshbarger
> Sent: Thursday, January 18, 2007 10:58 AM
> To: WebAIM Discussion List
> Subject: [WebAIM] Text Transcoders
>
>
> 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
>