Caveat: Accessibility forms a key part of my job (I do work for a disability charity, the Royal National Institute for Deaf people, after all) so I have very strong opinions on accessibility. Wear Asbestos Underwear And Protective Goggles.

Darius <squeakuser at inglang.com> wrote:
> I wrote:

> > Except for (at the least):
> > * people who can't see (or see well);
> > * people who want (or have to) use text-based browsers.
> 
> In principle, yes. In practice, no.
> 
> - People who can't see
>      are more likely to be readers than submitters and are 
> unlikely to be Squeak
> users due to its graphic/mouse dependant nature. 
> Alternatively, they can e-mail
> a sighted person to post for them.

OK, I don't know how many blind people use Squeak. We probably have no blind people using Squeak. Because blind people have no interest in Squeak? Or because blind people can't use Squeak? Yes, Squeak has many accessibility issues as you point out: blind people, or people with dexterity problems will find it very difficult to use Squeak. It's something we should work on, but that's a topic for another thread.

However, just because Squeak's (currently) inaccessible to segments of the population doesn't mean we should willingly and knowingly disenfranchise those segments of the population even further.

To say that blind people can email a sighted person to post for them is equivalent to saying is that stairs are accessible to people with no legs because they can get someone to carry them. Nonsense. If a person can't edit the swiki, by him- or herself, then the swiki's not accessible.

It's easy enough to determine if a particular measure is worth even considering: use the Golden Principle. If YOU were blind, would you bother editing the wiki if you had to email a friend to edit a post? Or would you feel slighted and disenfranchised?

Now, having said that, "captcha" tech works fine if and ONLY if you provide an equivalent experience for those who can't use sight. I don't know what tech that would be, but if we put measures in place it behooves us as responsible citizens of the Information Society, as human beings, to create accessible services so that anyone, regardless of abilities of preferences, can access the service.

Some good places to read about accessibility:
* Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 2.0: http://www.w3.org/TR/WCAG20/
* Deaf and Hard of Hearing Users and Web Accessibility: http://www.ictrnid.org.uk/docs/webacc.pdf (look at the section titles "Equivalency as the Basic Principle")
* The Web Access and Inclusion for Disabled People: http://www.drc-gb.org/publicationsandreports/2.pdf
* The US' Americans with Disabilities Act (which applies to web services)
* The UK's Disabilities Discrimination Act

frank


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