lynx-dev
[Top][All Lists]
Advanced

[Date Prev][Date Next][Thread Prev][Thread Next][Date Index][Thread Index]

LYNX-DEV or just ignorance?


From: Carl Reimann
Subject: LYNX-DEV or just ignorance?
Date: Mon, 21 Oct 1996 14:51:23 +0000 (GMT)

I just now heard from another of my little friends, targets from last
night's browsing. I jot little notes to 'authors' when their pages exhibit
serious flaws (where 'flaw' is unnecessary inaccessibility and/or poor
formatting). Partly I'm doing this to explore what will be necessary to
improve behaviour, in preparation for a more serious effort.

Anyway, this guy seemed genuinely put out that his page was bizarre, had
no idea it looked terrible, wanted to correct things, and affirmed that
MSIE + NS are after all 90%+ of the market. I believe that many decisions
made about features and compatibility are made under the influence of
software - put out by those two companies. People set about on a webbing
project and use the software, allowing it to form their questions and
answers about the whole of what the site should do. They don't, as they
should, formulate more broad questions, and then choose/use tools
accordingly.  In other words, the software forms their questions for them,
and they answer my observations in terms of what they see from that angle.
(For example, they make a frames page, and from the stats conclude that
frames are more 'popular' when in fact almost all browsers read frames
anyway.  This is an example of how they think in a circular way, not
asking instead 'are frames useful', or truly and scientifically
determining which is more useful to people, etc.)

I'm rambling a bit but am basically saying that what we need is education. 
And we have to be very careful of one thing: what will determine the
future is not simply browser software! What will determine the future is
web authoring software, which in general pushes people away from making
truly accessible sites. This battle must be fought on several fronts. 
Education of authors, giving authors tools, and making non-GUI browsers
that read the important things people have to say.


Carl

;
; To UNSUBSCRIBE:  Send a mail message to address@hidden
;                  with "unsubscribe lynx-dev" (without the
;                  quotation marks) on a line by itself.
;



reply via email to

[Prev in Thread] Current Thread [Next in Thread]