Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI) - home page

Eugenics polices in Germany were or at least are now widely despised.

Their idea was only perfect people should be able to do things; other people had no right to help and were lucky if they were just left alive to fend for themselves.

We take a different view of humanity today. If Albert Einstein had walked with a limp, or only had one arm - nobody would think twice now about helping him. And thanks to one individual, we can have something has powerful and one day necessary as nuclear energy, blood transfusions, sustainable agriculture - and so many things we take for granted.

The W3C (w3.org) takes pains to write down and organize how different files on the web should be structured/written.

They do this so different computers can use them. There have been embarrassing failures in the past of computers to work together.

More than once, computers designed to work together in an emergency failed to do so.

The same is true of people.

By creating websites that only work for one group of people, banks, hotels, and other institutions create a sort of a caste system that treats many groups as untouchables.

The excuses are legion and might even make a bit of sense in one way or other - except if you are one of the people being left outside in the cold, or know someone who is. Then, you might take a different point of view.

So the W3C also concerns itself that websites be compatible with real, live people too - not just some idealized person's in the back of someone's mind when they create a web page or a web product.

The Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI) is one project whose ongoing mission is to help make the web friendly to people - all people.

When you look at the number of disabled Americans from 1999, it is not small.

When you factor in how many people have been disabled by wars, acts of terror, accidents, and reemerging diseases in the past seven years, those figures are probably even higher now.

That goes for inside America right this minute, and abroad where people are just as interested in accessing many websites produced or operated in this country.

Websites can be great things to enable people to do things they would like - or desperately need - to do.

But, if the sites are not accessible, then the sites do not enable them to do those things.

Authors should not blame their readership for their reader's difficulties with their own work's shortcomings. The same is true in any medium.

Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI) - home page:

W3C WAI has been appointed to the Advisory Committee for the revision of U.S. Section 255 guidelines and Section 508 standards, which include Web accessibility. WAI looks forward to continuing to coordinate with organizations around the world to develop harmonized standards for Web accessibility.

If it really is a world wide web, then it has to act for everybody. Not just someone in another country, but someone who might live just down the street from you.

Technorati tags: accessibility, web, disabilities

Apple Safari and Mozilla Firefox starting to steal the show on the web

Competing for the public attention takes a lot, these days.

Clout is not enough to do it anymore.

The public is fickle, as many an actor, politician, and playwright - not to mention computer company - has discovered in the past fifty years.

During the past 5 years, one web browser, which had been dominant, has been sort of a Rip van Winkle.

It has been sleeping. While meanwhile, down in the information village below, a handful of groups and a lot of just-in-it-for-the-fun value-adding programmers - have created a modern world web experience far different than anything imagined at the start of this decade.

Right now, the latest web browser from Apple (Safari) combined with the latest web browser from the Mozilla group, Firefox - command more than fifteen percent of the so-called browser market share.

I think user share would be a more correct term but the point is the same.

Their cachet and influence has gone up, along with their user population, because they grew the power of their programs and managed to do it not at the expense of the overall user experience using the computer. They just work, and the computer just works.

Part of what seems to be helping them both is that both companies agree to use the same file formats. Ones that have long been documented at websites like W3.org and a few others.

The fact is that Safari and Firefox can easily display virtually all web pages now. Someone creating a new web page has to work pretty hard to make it not display correctly in either of them.

Some do, but it remains to be seen whether they will be rewarded for their efforts at doing that anymore.

Market share for browsers, operating systems and search engines

There was a huge stink last year when a number of the Katrina refuges tried to log into the public website for emergency assistance and were told to buy a new computer.

Their browser was not compatible with the site and only worked with the one that came with a recent version of a certain computer, updated with the latest version of that software.

These were people who had been forced to leave their homes with just the clothes on their backs, and likely never owned a state-of-the-art, brand-spanking-new computer.

They were trying to just use an old computer in a temporary/emergency shelter to access some services like they had promised they would be able to use.

The W3.org site has been sitting there a lot time. Apple and Firefox makers read the directions, and created their web browsers accordingly.

After looking at the pie chart on the page linked to above, it is easy to see that creating web pages that just work in one version of one web browser simply will not cut it anymore.

Look how many people do not even use that brand of web browser, let alone a particular version with particular accessory software that in turn levies even more requirements on the computer+owner.

ATMs and phone support systems all over the US have worked in Spanish, not just English, throughout this decade.

Shouldn't web page designers work not just with one year, make, and model of web browser whose users comprise 40, 50, or 70 percent of the population of this nation?

Isn't it time they work with all of them. Especially when it is an emergency and they need help, they want to manage their bank account.

They can do it in Spanish in Washington, DC. Why on earth can't they do it on the web with Safari or Firefox, or a ten year old computer, in Washington, DC?

See my point?

When you look at the features of the browsers, it is the Safari and the Firefox and Camino and Sea Monkey and Mozilla and Netscape browsers that are the more powerful - and the more modern.

Let Rip van Winkle turn over and sleep a few more winks.

Don't expect him to carry the day in an emergency.

Don't him to represent 100% of We The People. Companies and organizations that serve The Public need to do more than support 25%, 50%, or 75%.

Technorati tags: web, browsing, software, statistics

Apple Safari and Mozilla Firefox starting to steal the show on the web

Competing for the public attention takes a lot, these days.

Clout is not enough to do it anymore.

The public is fickle, as many an actor, politician, and playwright - not to mention computer company - has discovered in the past fifty years.

During the past 5 years, one web browser, which had been dominant, has been sort of a Rip van Winkle.

It has been sleeping. While meanwhile, down in the information village below, a handful of groups and a lot of just-in-it-for-the-fun value-adding programmers - have created a modern world web experience far different than anything imagined at the start of this decade.

Right now, the latest web browser from Apple (Safari) combined with the latest web browser from the Mozilla group, Firefox - command more than fifteen percent of the so-called browser market share.

I think user share would be a more correct term but the point is the same.

Their cachet and influence has gone up, along with their user population, because they grew the power of their programs and managed to do it not at the expense of the overall user experience using the computer. They just work, and the computer just works.

Part of what seems to be helping them both is that both companies agree to use the same file formats. Ones that have long been documented at websites like W3.org and a few others.

The fact is that Safari and Firefox can easily display virtually all web pages now. Someone creating a new web page has to work pretty hard to make it not display correctly in either of them.

Some do, but it remains to be seen whether they will be rewarded for their efforts at doing that anymore.

Market share for browsers, operating systems and search engines

There was a huge stink last year when a number of the Katrina refuges tried to log into the public website for emergency assistance and were told to buy a new computer. Their browser was not compatible with the site and only worked with the one that came with a recent version of a certain computer, updated with the latest version of that software.

These were people who had been forced to leave their homes with just the clothes on their backs, and likely never owned a state-of-the-art, brand-spanking-new computer.

They were trying to just use an old computer in a temporary/emergency shelter to access some services like they had promised they would be able to.

The W3.org site has been sitting there a lot time. Apple and Firefox makers read the directions, and created their web browsers accordingly.

After looking at the pie chart on the page linked to above, it is easy to see that creating web pages that just work in one version of one web browser simply will not cut it anymore.

ATMs and phone support systems all over the US have worked in Spanish, not just English, throughout this decade.

Shouldn't web page designers work not just with one year, make, and model of web browser whose users comprise 40, 50, or 70 percent of the population of this nation?

Isn't it time they work with all of them. Especially when it is an emergency and they need help, they want to manage their bank account.

They can do it in Spanish in Washington, DC. Why on earth can't they do it on the web with Safari or Firefox, or a ten year old computer, in Washington, DC?

See my point?

Technorati tags: web, browsing, software, statistics