[thelist] Flash, usability, accessibility

[Erik Mattheis]

At 1:11 AM +0100 6/8/02, Martin Burns wrote:
>On Saturday, June 8, 2002, at 12:33  am, John Corry wrote:
>Which hardly supports trolls like:
>>>  > There are people with no interest in Flash that will jump in telling
>>>  you you'll be sued if you use Flash, but they can be ignored.

Martin, I was not trolling. I love evolt and take it way seriously
when a member has the impression that certain aspects of web design
cannot be discussed. Sorry that I laughed instead of cried, and
sorrier that your ASCII trollometer was funnier than my sarcasm!

Being as you mistook the comment as bait ... I have no choice but to
help the critter ensnarled in my unmeaning trap ...

>That troll didn't really go a long way towards:
><quote src="evolt.org site footer">promoting the mutual free
>exchange of ideas, skills and experiences. </quote>
>particularly when those experiences include a knowledge of the
>applicable law which Erik clearly doesn't have.

It's not that I don't have knowledge that you do ... it's that you
interpret existing laws as applying to _all_ websites and I interpret
them as only speaking to government websites ... and at this very
moment I'm still defending my interpretation.

I spent the better part of two days researching whether there were
laws on the books or tort in the US that would require a privately
funded website to be accessible to those with disabilities. My
conclusion was a resounding "NO" (for the US _and_ elsewhere) ... if
anyone's interested in doing research themselves, a good start is at
http://www.wired.com/news/print/0,1294,44062,00.html

Privately funded websites are currently under no obligation to make
their content available to all devices ... a screen reader, NN 1, a
computer without a mouse or keyboard, browser without Flash, whatever
...

I'm certainly willing to reverse my evaluation ... someone send me
the link I didn't find!

>Let me put Erik's troll another way, and see how you and he feels about
>it:
>There are people with a hardon for Flash that will jump in telling you
>that you can use Flash without awareness of the legal and business
>impacts of accessibility failure and how to mitigate them, but they can
>be ignored.

I definitely missed the post or posts which you have in mind ... or
you're referring to me and also misrepresenting me.

--

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- Erik Mattheis

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