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From: Jim Blanton
Date: Wed, Dec 03 2003 12:13PM
Subject: FW: Web accessibility: The Text-only Revolution
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What's the wisdom of the community on UsableNet's LIFT Text Transcoder?

jb

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From: John Foliot - WATS.ca
Date: Wed, Dec 03 2003 1:48PM
Subject: RE: Web accessibility: The Text-only Revolution
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Can't claim to have definitive wisdom, but always willing to share an
opinion <grin>:

Item 1:

> Maybe "revolution" is too strong a word but providing an instant text-mode
> for your entire web site, using a server based solution with "assistive
> annotations" and "assistive previews," is very NEW and worth taking a look
> at.

Well authored and intelligently created web documents already have separated
the "text" from the display. We call it XHTML and CSS, and is the
*recommended* way of doing things (recommended by the W3C - the defacto
standards body for all things "web"). Not sure how NEW and/or revolutionary
it is...


Item 2:

> The LIFT Text Transcoder uses unique "assistive annotations" and
> "assistive previews"

Hmm... Sounds like a proprietary system to me... I personally always become
nervous whenever a proprietary system comes along and has "THE Solution(TM)"
My "spidey sense(*)" also kicks in whenever a "magic bullet" solution is
offered by anybody. Ain't no such thing as a free lunch, and any system is
only as good as the people who use it. In the area of web accessibility,
understanding the issues is far harder than developing solutions to address
them (specific conversation threads on this forum not-withstanding...). So
when a blanket application shows up that "...Solves many accessibility
issues while supporting PDAs..." I become very wary; how can you resolve an
issue if you don't know what it is in the first place?

(* Spidey sense being a cultural reference to the Comic book hero Spiderman,
who referred to his heightened sense of intuition / premonition of impending
"evil" as "Spidey sense"...)


Item 3:

> To get a live demo of your site in text-mode and to see real world
> "assistive annotations" and "assistive previews" go to:

...and then give them your email address and name and a sales person will be
in touch. PULEEEZE....

Jim, all I can say is caveat emptor. Organizations that are mandated to
adhere to accessibility guidelines (under penalty of potential litigation)
and who put all their faith in one tool to achieve this or any other
compliancy goal are, IMHO, playing with fire. A tool, any tool, is only as
good as the person using it, and my personal concern is that organizations
and businesses will purchase this tool, "push the button" and sit back on
their laurels believing they have addressed the accessibility issue. It
appears just too simplistic a solution to truly address the very real needs
of many users (beyond those with the need for text only content). Does this
magic tool address issues for the mobility impaired? The cognitively
impaired? Those with auditory impairments (rarely an issue, but one which
should not be forgotten)? In fairness to the folk at LIFT, they don't claim
that it does it all ("...Solves many accessibility issues..."), but in the
rush to become compliant, how many uneducated / undereducated purchasing
agents out there will miss the finesse of the word "many"?

JF
--
John Foliot = EMAIL ADDRESS REMOVED =
Web Accessibility Specialist / Co-founder of WATS.ca
Web Accessibility Testing and Services
http://www.wats.ca 1.866.932.4878 (North America)





>

From: John Foliot - WATS.ca
Date: Wed, Dec 03 2003 3:05PM
Subject: Now I'm just plain confused... (was: RE: Web accessibility: The Text-only Revolution)
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If you visit the UsableNet website here:
http://www.usablenet.com/products_services/customers.html to their credit
(and my tip-of-the-hat) the page validates as XHTML 1.0 Strict (!!) If you
"click" on the link to serve up the same page as "Text Only" the resulting
page drops to Valid HTML 4.01 Transitional... still valid, but why are they
doing this? Am I the only one confused by this?

If they validate to XHTML 1.0 Strict, they have effectively separated the
"design" from the text already and are using CSS for design layout etc. At
this point, don't all user agents that require / serve up text only get just
that? Why would you need to create a link which serves up an earlier HTML
version of the same content (minus the pretty)? The hard part has already
been done...

Perhaps this cold I feel coming on has something to do with my addled brain
today, but can anybody from this list (or perhaps UsableNet) explain why a
tool which moves content "backwards" to an earlier version of HTML is
useful?

JF
--
John Foliot = EMAIL ADDRESS REMOVED =
Web Accessibility Specialist / Co-founder of WATS.ca
Web Accessibility Testing and Services
http://www.wats.ca 1.866.932.4878 (North America)



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From: Shawn Lawton Henry
Date: Wed, Dec 03 2003 3:54PM
Subject: RE: Web accessibility: The Text-only Revolution
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> Subject: FW: Web accessibility: The Text-only Revolution

Very dangerous:
- text-only versions are rarely totally equivalent in content to the
graphic ("real") version
- text-only is accessible to some, and not to others; for example people
with cognitive disabilities often benefit from graphical elements such
as effective icons and navigation areas set apart on a coloured
background
- when there is a text-only version available, developers usually do not
make the graphic ("real") version accessible


From "Understanding Web Accessibility" in "Constructing Accessible
Websites" [1]:

Myth: Just Add a Text-Only Version

A common approach to providing accessible web pages is to design a site,
and then make a separate accessible site, that is, text-only version.
The issue of text-only versions crosses into the idea of separate versus
inclusive design. In today's environment, providing separately developed
sites is rarely the best approach for accessibility, or for business.
(However, providing truly equivalent information that can be accessed
graphically or textually from the same content source is advantageous.)

In the past, common assistive technologies were not able to handle
complex web page designs. For example, screen readers read across the
screen, so multi-column newspaper-style layouts were not usable. It was
nearly impossible at one time to provide visually appealing, complex,
dynamic web sites that were also accessible. Therefore, designers were
faced with the choice of either significant constraints on their design
or providing a text-only version. Now, technologies let you develop
visually appealing, complex, dynamic web sites that are also accessible.
Style sheets offer more presentation functionality, assistive
technologies can handle layout tables, and browsers provide text
resizing. Many recent technologies from the W3C such as Scaleable Vector
Graphics (SVG) actually provide more flexibility for presentation as
well as accessibility support.

There are several problems with providing a separate accessible site:

- Separate versions are rarely equal. When there are two versions of the
site, invariably, the text-only version does not get updated as
frequently as the main version. Even when organizations and individuals
have the best intentions of keeping two sites synchronized, the
realities of deadlines and limited resources interfere. As discussed
overleaf, emerging technologies and methodologies are minimizing this
problem.

- The primary version often lacks even the most basic accessibility.
Commonly, developers of alternative accessible test-only sites spend
little effort making the primary site accessible. The alternative site
is often optimized for screen readers, with all information provided
linearly and without graphics and color. However, some people would be
better off using an accessible primary site.

Some new tools generate both a primary site and a text-only site from a
single source of content, supposedly eliminating the first problem
mentioned, that of separate sites not being synchronized. In one such
implementation that I reviewed, the text-only site was fairly close in
content to the primary site. However, the alternative site was missing
promotional material. Therefore, users of the text-only version missed
out on special offers offered through the web site. Clearly this was
discriminatory.

Certainly technologies and development efforts are beginning to provide
the tools and methodologies needed to ensure that truly equivalent
multiple versions of a site can be provided. For example, using XSLT to
transform XML documents into other markup more suited for specific
configurations or ASP to dynamically generate pages from database or XML
files. Organizations such as SmartForce are creating multiple versions
from a single content source. This is a promising development.

---

[1] "Constructing Accessible Websites" by Jim Thatcher, Cynthia Waddell,
Shawn Henry, Sarah Swierenga, Mark Urban, Michael Burks, Paul Bohman,
Publisher: APress; Reprint edition (July 14, 2003), ISBN: 1590591488


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