text to html

Sun Aug 31 16:26:57 EDT 2003

First of all, great job on your exhaustive documentation of the issue.
Also, I got all four of your emails, so while I'm replying to this one,
it goes for all four. I don't want to clutter the list with four emails
to every part of your paper, so I'll try to address them all here.

I was using personal experience as a support and definitely not a soul
support or even as the basis of my judgement or analysis of the pre
element tag and it's accessibility or lack there of. I also did not say
that it was ok to use this tag in the form of
<html><body><pre>content</pre></body></html> for the site, as I backed
up with a follow up email. I don't have the quote on me but it went
something like this if you read it.

I can help you get a temporary site up, while using some pre element
tags, I can get a better site up in your time constraint and then also
work with you on totally erasing all <pre> element tags and moving over
to style sheets or something that would fit more with your needs and
accessibility requirements.

Note that, the above text is not a direct quote but a paraphrase of a
follow up email I sent to Luke and others on the list with the same
subject as we have been using for this thread. Also, I wanted to state
that the w3c doesn't seem to be directly discouraging the use of this
tag through any documents I have chanced to read. It seems to be
discouraging certain principals and practices which you aptly compare to
the pre element tag. This is wonderful, I thank you for watching out for
the accessibility of a site. And as I stated before, I have no qualms
about the fact that the pre element tag is the most accessible in the
world; however, you keep stating that it would disrupt the accessibility
to...for example *people who have difficulties understanding large
blocks of text*

Well, it is the designer's responsibility to not use it in this fashion.
As any tag, even stylesheets or any other element can be exhaustively
and ridiculously overused, so can the pre element tag. I wanted to know
a specific example if you would? Maybe by looking at the page that
resulted from this email thread to begin with? I would love to hear your
feed back on that precise page, and since you are familiar with all the
disabilities and problems that individuals with disabilities face on the
internet, you would be a great judge of that exact page. However,
judging a page on it's use of a tag without looking at how it should be
used is not exactly fare to the developer of the page, no matter how
temporary the fix may be. 

I will also agree with you that the pre element tag should be avoided
because of the very debates it has spawned here; however, you seem to
put little value in time constraints and in a specific example...while
you relate everything to a perfect and ideal kind of world. You
mentioned languages in your first email, the #1 of 3.

I am amazed to here this. Does this mean that every single page on the
internet, I can't even begin to imagine how many pages that is, needs to
be in every single possible language known to man? This would
exponentially grow the size of the most simple websites to litterally
thousands of pages with hundreds of different combinations and
permutations of languages. 

I wish, more than you might recognize, that the entire internet was as
accessible to me as it is to any non-disabled individual; however, I
also recognize some reality here. This does not mean that I am giving up
or saying "oh well, it's nothing that can be done about it". I am
however stating that sometimes, discretion and wise decisions are
necessary. If I have a deadline, and my option is to get a site up in
one hour, accessible or not accessible. And to make this accessible
would supercede my hour. Then I'm sorry, I would put up the unaccessible
site, even adding a note of it's unaccessibility and my sincere
apologies. I would then work on, even if it were my own time, to make
that site accessible.

Anyways, I am afraid I must go off to an appointment right now. Thanks
again for your research and have a great labor day holiday.

Take care all,
Sina