Web site compatibility was Re: OT: windoze woes and full rant mode is on

The postings below are for those who may not have followed the full
thread.

In the United States it is a requirement that all web-sites conform to
section 506 regulations of the Americans with Disabilities Act. Very
briefly it means that a web-site must be accessible to people who are
blind or deaf or motion limited but a web site does not have to
provide for multiple disabilities. The UN regulations at least used
to be the same according to the person from IBM who gave a SHARE
presentation on the topic back in 2001. According to the experts in
the field, if the design is done up front and standards are followed
including use of certain data in the HTML tags such as descriptors for
graphics, this does not add much expense. This also means being
sensitive to the use of colour because certain colour combination can
make a screen unreadable to people whose colour vision isn't good. You
should be able to navigate the screen by just using the keyboard. For
web-sites that are used for commercial, employment, educational or
means to access services, I can make a good case that if you believe
in access for those with physical challenges and enabling them to be
mainstream, then the force of law makes sense.

In general, I would say that paying attention to the standards for the
Internet and expecting as trailing edge a set of current
non-deprecated functions as feasible on the client should
automatically make the site usable to the majority of browsers. I
know that I was not impressed when I had to download Macromedia Flash
to access the Microfocus web site. I had the IT people at the client
site do it since it was the company's computer.

In my case, I am more concerned about web-sites that require
unrequested pop-ups or software that I consider creates security
exposures on my machine. I use Firefox as my primary browser because
it is moderately more secure. I use Windows because it runs the
software I want. If I get the energy, I will create a dual boot for
Linux on our home desktop or get a low powered one to play with. I am
using Internet Explorer at work because that is what the client uses.
If what I was doing required a Mac, I would use that and would want
any web page I read using browsers there to work. In a sense, it is
sort of like COBOL, if you want your program or web page to work
across platforms, don't use vendor extensions and if possible turn
them off in the development environment. Also, if you are targeting
rural areas or people with lower income, make sure you page works with
28.8. You won't be able to give them access to real-time audio or
video but they should be able to do most business comfortably.

Clark Morris

On Wed, 8 Nov 2006 13:04:06 +1300, "Pete Dashwood"
<dashwood@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:


"Alistair" <alistair@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:1162924582.847762.316340@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

<snip

Apparently they need multiple versions of I.E. as well.

In the UK, a compamy may be prosecuted for failing to provide access to
disabled users. So every possible eyesight impairment must be catered
for (and some require action which would impede other visually impaired
users). It is not beyond imagination to consider a future where one
could be prosecuted for failing to provide adequate access to IE3
users.

According to best recommendations (in various webmaster manuals) you
should test on browsers as far back as IE3 (the most popular one), IE6
(the fastest growing variant of IE), Netscape (3 and 4?), Firefox (the
worlds' favourite?), etc. Oh, and don't forget, don't design in Flash
because many users still use 28k modems, don't use activex (security
issues) and many people disable Java and Javascript.


Thanks for reminding me about this, Alistair. I had honestly forgotten how
difficult some people and organisations, who have probably never developed a
web site in their lives, try and make it for those of us who do.

The fact is that, as a web developer, of course I want as many people as
possible to see my sites and enjoy the experience of visiting. I'll take all
reasonable measures to guarantee this, but if some are not able, then that
is just too bad. Who suffers here? Only the Web Developer. To try and
legally enforce measures to make the site more accessible is crazy. I don't
discriminate against handicapped people in life and I wouldn't do so on a
web site, but neither will I spend hours to ensure that any particular
portion of this group can have access. If they can't see the pages, I'm
sorry. There are accessibility features in Windows that may help. If they
choose not to use Windows or use some other software that doesn't have those
features, then that is entirely a matter for them.

By the same token, if an antiMS fanatic tells me I MUST make the site
friendly to his particular flavour of Browser, and there is "no excuse" for
not doing so, I would say I can immediately think of several excuses for not
doing so... Being coerced would be the first one :-)

When people develop web sites they put in many hours of thought and effort
to designing and building. They will use tools that help that process. Those
tools are usually oriented to the platform where the site is being built,
although products like Dreamweaver have had rudimentary facilities for cross
browser testing for many years. Unfortunately, these tests are not always
accurate, as I found to my chagrin during the last development exercise I
undertook. The latest release of Dreamweaver (part of MacroMedia's Studio 8)
apparently has rectified this and is much better at ensuring cross browser
compatibility, but this is a very expensive tool.

Nobody developing a web site wants to limit the accessibility of it, either
by browser or by any other limiting factor. It is a question of what is
viable. If I embed an ActiveX control on my web server, there is no problem.
If I try and download it to the client, there can be. If I put JavaScript
on a client page, some of the people viewing it won't see it as intended; if
I replace it with ASP on the server and dynamically create the page, there
should be no problem.

You could easily conclude that the best solution is probably to do
EVERYTHING on the web server, then simply serve up a dynamically constructed
page that suits the particular browser being used. This is the goal I am
currently trying to reach, but it certainly isn't easy.

I will soon be undertaking a major web development effort and will use all
the experience I have accumulated previously to try and attain this goal.

It isn't just about browsers, either. There is the question of what the
Hosting ISP will allow... can I run COBOL CGI code? Does he support ASP,
Java/VB Script on the server? Can I use MySQL or must it be SQL Server?

There is much more to it than the average person realises when they just
find that their browser doesn't render a certain page correctly.

Web developers are probably never going to be all things to all people
(except maybe for the very most trivial applications with static pages). I
try to listen to the feedback I get and take it on board. But if it takes me
100 hours to make something I have already built, visible to 15% of the
audience for it, I'd rather invest that 100 hours providing better stuff for
the 85%...

Truly it is written...

"For he that hath, to him shall be given: and he that hath not, from him
shall be taken away even that which he hath."

(St. Mark, if I remember rightly...)

Pete.




.

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