Coding for intranets (was RE: [thelist] Color Chooser Review -- c orrection)

[Luther, Ron]

Hi Joel,

Great thread!    ;-)

Another (similar) view;

On the Intranet side I've personally been more concerned with 'usability' than 'accessibility' ... and they are different animals.

Of course, as someone else noted, if we do run across an accessibility issue - we jump all over it to get it resolved.  [So far what I've seen has been mainly restricted to issues involving parameter interoperability on servers in other continents preventing users from getting to my reports - which is a little different kind of accessibility!]

On the Intranet side of the house we have an SOE [1] in place.  Granted, it may change over time due to software upgrades or due to other major changes like mergers. But what that does is relieve some of the cross-browser and accessibility pressures.  For example, a user can't come over and bother me because my report doesn't work for them if they turn JavaScript off ... because turning JavaScript off would be "non-SOE" - and I would be allowed to beat them with a stick over it.

While I agree with Martin that accessibility should be planned for now and built in up front to prevent issues from becoming pressing in the future, it's not happening in my neighborhood. (Some of my support guys still write 20+ lines of VB code because they don't know what a radio button is. I think they're writing for ASP 1.0!)


For me it's the Xtranets where I worry more about accessibility issues.  I'm working on a project now where the reports will be visible to users in other companies.  I don't know what their SOE is.  For this project I have been a *lot* more concerned about validation, about accessibility, and about liability if one of the other company's users has accessibility issues with the report.


My 2¢,

RonL.

[1] Standard Operating Environment.