text to html (2 of 2)

[Janina Sajka]

[continued]

> 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. 

JS: I don't claim to know it all, just some. And, I believe I was
responding to a specific suggestion that went something like "Just put
it inside a <PRE>." I still think that's a bad approach, even for a so
called "temporary fix," though I believe the time element justification
was added a day or two after the initial debate on this issue began.
> 
> 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.
iJS: I don't know what you mean about the perfect world. I do believe a
job should be done properly, and that it should not be represented as
something it isn't. Advice such as "just put it in a <pre> tag," or
another that was made here, namely, "just but <br> tags on each line" is
bad and pernicious advice. It's slovenly and mendacious as well, in my
view. I will continue to take exception to it wherever I find it.


> 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
JS: No, I believe the document reads "They may not speak or understand
fluently the language in which
       the document is written," meaning that this is another kind of
       accessibility issue. The WCAG does not say, nor did I say, that
       all documents are to be translated into all languages, or even
       some languages. That's a solution you arrived at by way of
       conclusion. But, it's not the W3C's solution, nor is it mine.
> 
> 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.

JS: Well, I suppose I should applaud your willingness to sacrifice
yourself and your time. But, I don't see any need to fall over a sword
here. If a job is worth doing, imho, it's worth doing properly to begin
with. There just aren't enough hours around to do each job twice. And, I
don't want to do any of them twice, speaking for myself, of course.

				Janina