[vicsireland] Re: Text-only website alternatives- good or bad?
- From: "Tim Culhane" <tim.culhane@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: <vicsireland@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Tue, 2 May 2006 08:42:36 +0100
Hi,
In the legal sense I don't think a text only website is deemed as being
discriminatory, at least in Ireland.
The law usually states that reasonable steps must be made to make services
accessible.
However, I don't believe that any case law has been established regarding
whether websites come under the heading of a service.
Even if they do, the word 'reasonable' always gives developers a lot of
riggle room.
To be honest, I don't think that legal enforcement is necessarily the way
forward, but rather education, education, education.
Tim
-----Original Message-----
From: vicsireland-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
[mailto:vicsireland-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of sorcha moore
Sent: 28 April 2006 14:56
To: vicsireland@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [vicsireland] Text-only website alternatives- good or bad?
Hi everyone,
I am a frustrated web accessibility developer. I spend my working days
finding ways to make sites more accessible and user friendly to people and
AT like screen readers. I am frustrated because recently I saw an
advertisement to submit designs for a website. In the ad, the advertiser did
state that the site should be as accessible as possible, but added the
requirement ".. a text only version of the site should be available to
facilitate the visually impaired...".
My question is can this decision to provide a separate version of the
website, be deemed discriminatory?
In my humble opinion, I do not see any need to provide a separate website as
it is not difficult to make most web pages compatible with screen readers,
but can we go as far as to see this as being 'discriminatory'?
I am very interested in getting your opinions/experiences with text-only
versions of websites. Please feel free to contact me off-list if you
prefer.
All the best,
Sorcha
(Apologies for not editing the subject title appropriately in my previous
email. I'm afraid, I am one of the "tsk"-ers when someone else does it. I
am using gmail which hides the subject field normally so in my haste to get
the email out, I totally forgot to do it -sorry,
sorry!)
> Hello,
> I don't know if this is the appropriate forum for my question, but I'm
> finding it difficult to get precise information. Does anyone know
> exactly what Irish legislation/policy/law is regarding the provision
> of text-only versions of state owned websites? Is it dicriminatory to
> provide a text-only version of a website rather than try to make a
> website accessible? The Web Content Accessibilty Guidelines on which
> the Irish National Disability Authority IT Accessibility Guidelines
> are based state "If, after best efforts, you cannot create an
> accessible page, provide a link to an alternative page that uses W3C
> technologies, is accessible, has equivalent information (or
> functionality), and is updated as often as the inaccessible
> (original) page" but I can't see this referenced on the Irish National
> Disability Authority IT Accessibility Guidelines... Kindest Regards,
> Sorcha
>
>
>
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