Fwd: Re: [Mailman-Users] Web accessibility

[Brad Knowles]

[This message has been forwarded to the mailing list at the request of
Jeff, the person who originally sent it to just me.  -Brad]


>From: "Anoetic Concepts" <Admin at AnoeticConcepts.com>
>To: "Brad Knowles" <brad.knowles at skynet.be>
>Subject: Re: [Mailman-Users] Web accessibility
>Date: Thu, 8 Jul 2004 22:26:41 -0700
>
>Brad Knowles wrote:
>
>>I have been informed that many visually challenged people use
>>Internet Explorer instead of Netscape...
>
>Internet Explorer is used because of a development hook built into it
>called MS Active Accessibility which allows screen access software to
>gather information about the page which is normally not provided in
>the rendered page.  I have read that Foxfire which apparently looks
>much like IE is going to be implementing MSAA or something similar,
>but this is only rumor at this point and has certainly not been done
>yet.
>
>>and while some advanced features may be turned off, others (like
>>Javascript) are apparently typically kept turned on because many
>>pages require them.
>
>Actually, I have left the default IE settings and not turned anything
>off.  As I said, MSAA allows my screen access software to "speak" the
>text quite well and it provides additional information such as
>announcing links and visited links, images, form fields, and so on.
>
>>Nevertheless, this is for a given subset of the visually
>>challenged community.  For people who are completely blind, this
>>method probably won't work and alternative methods would have to be
>>used.
>
>Not true.  As I said, with MSAA, pages which conform to the W3C
>specifications are easily rendered by speech access software.  Of
>course, anyone with enough vision to require only magnification rather
>than speech access would not need any special rendering of the page.
>In these cases, the most common need is the ability to adjust colors
>to a higher contrast.
>
>To answer the specific question about Mailman pages, they are
>perfectly accessible.  I have no problems with them whatsoever.
>
>Jeff, the Ultra guy
>http://www.UltraHost.US
>http://www.UltraRadio.US
>
-- 
Brad Knowles, <brad.knowles at skynet.be>

"Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little
temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety."

     -- Benjamin Franklin (1706-1790), reply of the Pennsylvania
     Assembly to the Governor, November 11, 1755

   SAGE member since 1995.  See <http://www.sage.org/> for more info.