Janina, Well said but I don't know what local parentus is <grin> They had plenty of help. They had deep discussions with the wai and others around the country and infact the world. Much of what they adopted came at the urging of industry and somewhat of a lack among the consumer community although I know that afb commented in volumes. I do know that the draft we saw before publication was substantially changed between that final draft and its publication through locked room proceedings. I've said enough on this though considering it's off topic for the list. One more item though. 508 will be revisitted and hopefully, this time, it will be improved re the standards, but with the way that wcag 2.0 is going, I have my doubts if it is strung against it. -- Jonnie Apple Seed With His: Hands-On Technolog(eye)s On Jun 10, 2005, at 9:11 AM, Janina Sajka wrote: Well, it is probably useful to recognize who did it, and what their credentials are for doing it. The agency entrusted with the task had no previous experience in technology regulations. In particular, I would warrant most of its Board not particularly qualified in technology, though perhaps well qualified in more traditional accessibility issues. Suffice it to say they had to change their name from "Architectural and Transportation Barriers Compliance Board." Just a few years previous to this assignment, they described their charge as "all the things in a building that wouldn't fall out if you could turn the building upside down and shake it." I'm not saying it was unreasonable to entrust the task to this agency, just that they were rather new to the kind of regulating being asked of them. The thesis suggested by David Poehlman is probably as good as any. Even though it smacks of "in loco parentis," it's plausible. So, too, is the notion expressed at the URL I posted yesterday that some computational tasks should be done client side, rather than server side, as if servers were going to be overloaded with extraneous computational loads. Suffice it to say that 508 represents the first time fairly serious requirements on accessibility were imposed by the world's number one technology customer. If you look at press stories about 508 around the year 2000, there was quite a bit of fear mongering. It should not be surprising that significant pressure would be exerted against various provisions or proposed provisions. Despite any failings, and I believe 508 has failings, I still regard it as a solid move forward. Discrepencies such as the one under discussion cannot continue unaddressed, because technology tends to abhor discrepencies among political jurisdictions. Industry isn't served if entity 1 requires A, but entity 2 requires "not A." Such things need to be resolved and eventually this one will be. I would close by observing my own disappointment about 508 is not so much with the regs, but with our communities failure to pose any significant challenge to 508 enforcement or practice. I'm unaware of any significant 508 complaint, and that is just not credible to me. Certainly there are problems, and there are mechanisms for adjudicating complaints. I am one who believes that the 508 regulations fall far short of the 508 law itself and are thus excellent fodder for complaints. But, we don't have any--at least not any significant ones. Karen Lewellen writes: > > Go ahead, I am really interested in your opinion on this given you > are > actively involved with some of the process. > _______________________________________________ Speakup mailing list Speakup at braille.uwo.ca http://speech.braille.uwo.ca/mailman/listinfo/speakup
