Martin: Thank you for your willingness to take on development effort. I am responding to clear up a non technical point, or rather one that has nothing to do with technology, but everything to do with the law. Under Section 508, the U.S. Government does not get off the hook because some authoring tool doesn't support accessibility. And, in AFB's view, when it comes to U.S. Government information systems intended for use by the public, it doesn't suffice that it works with only a particular piece of proprietary anything. It must, in our reading of the law, support the public, not some particular technology. In all honesty, I think a great part of the problem is that too many of the responsible officials define testing and cross-platform to mean "it works with Windows 95, 98, ME, 2000, and XP, so we're OK." While I expect Microsoft might like this definition of cross-platform, it is not the definition I learned in school, and it is not the definition that we should accept. In the end, the government is on the hook to deliver. Whatever any technology provider claims or delivers, it's the government agencies that can be sued for noncompliance. The first step is the complaint. Filing complaints is meaningful. On Fri, 12 Apr 2002, Martin McCormick wrote: > I am not defending all the inaccessible web sites at all, > but the problem these days is that the web developers themselves > don't sit around and write html with text editors like one can do > if necessary. They are using commercial web authoring engines > which are full of mystery meat software and proprietary code > aimed at either Netscape or Internet Explorer. > > The developers of the actual web sites don't seem to know > what went in to their actual page, only that it looks a certain > way on this or that browser. > > I am trying to figure out what it will take to get > javascript support for lynx, but I haven't really even begun to > start actually solving the problem. I am still thinking and > planning. > > While this discussion is technically off-topic for this > list, it does deal with the technology needed to use the web and > the problems we have. > > In brief, I have had no luck at all in getting any real > change on a system-wide basis even where I work. Our web sites > are all built with Lotus Domino and they are junk as far as lynx > goes. Netrik will read the first page, but you can't really do > anything yet with netrik so it is a neat concept car, but it > doesn't get me to the store today. > > I had a brief correspondence with Mindleaders.com last > year. They clame accessibility to their site for screen readers. > If the screen reader is named JAWS, and your browser is from > Microsoft, maybe so. If it is lynx and you use Linux, forget it > for now. You can't even log in. > > Here is my final question. Is something considered > accessible if it is only accessible through JAWS? > > As for the javascript for lynx, I got the mozilla > distribution and am going to see if there is any Earthly way to > use the javascript rendering engine in a text-based environment. > It's gonna' be a long hard fight. > > Right now, as far as I know, we simply don't have any way > to work these javascript-run sites in UNIX. > > Maybe I should first try to get lynx to gracefully handle > relative links because a large number of sites would work if not > for that. > > As usual, the possibilities are exciting, but the current > reality is frustrating. > > Martin McCormick > > > > _______________________________________________ > > Blinux-list@redhat.com > https://listman.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/blinux-list > -- Janina Sajka, Director Technology Research and Development Governmental Relations Group American Foundation for the Blind (AFB) Email: janina@afb.net Phone: (202) 408-8175 Chair, Accessibility SIG Open Electronic Book Forum (OEBF) http://www.openebook.org