On Jan 20, 2005, at 8:52 PM, Jordi Bunster wrote:

>
> On Jan 20, 2005, at 8:39 PM, Francis Hwang wrote:
>
>> I personally never know how much to worry about people using textual 
>> browsers anyway--and the site that I program for my day job doesn't 
>> degrade gracefully either--so perhaps the point is fairly academic.
>
> You're right, it is fairly academic, maybe except for the fact that if 
> it works OK in a text browser, you're halfway through on the job of 
> making it usable to the blind or near blind folks.
>
> I realize that they are not part of everyone's target audience. What 
> you'd be surprised is how many people think that their target audience 
> doesn't cover the blind, when it fact by not caring about them they 
> lose a fair chunk of business.

Yeah, it's a tough call, especially as we see more web apps that use 
this stuff really heavily -- another example is GMail, which I've heard 
criticized for not being accessible. Sometimes I think that real 
accessibility will happen only when we get past being HTML-centric in 
designing our sites. I think we're creeping in that direction, though 
it may take another decade to be more than just some research project.

Another thing that affects the calculation is who exactly Ta-Da list is 
for. (I mean, other than a smart way to snare unsuspecting customers 
into paying for Basecamp.) But I'm the sort of guy who can't use Ta-Da, 
anyway, since I'm too hooked on my PDA. Even though most of the other 
coders I know are quite proud of their notecard systems. Man, I 
should've been a lawyer.

Francis Hwang
http://fhwang.net/