[thechat] rebel without a clause

[Tony Crockford]

<long, but well constructed argument snipped>
> The art is in
> knowing which aspect of 'design' you are talking about, and bringing
> someone with opposing view into the golden middle ground.
>
> Andy W

Thank you for eloquently making the point that I'd been struggling with
all day.

It is possible to "design" an accessible site by taking into account all
aspects of *purpose*.  Making a site accessible and bland is not the
same as making a site exciting and accessible...

I'm working on a site that has as its primary purpose the presentation
of digitised assets - things that you wouldn't, couldn't, see if the
site didn't exist. (old library books, newspaper articles, museum
artefacts)  It also comes with a heavy burden to meet strict
accessibility targets and my struggle was with the how and why.  One
line of yours made it all make sense:

<snip>At the end of the day, a blind-user is not going to get the same
impact from a art-based site as a sighted viewer. But if you can offer
him some alternative descriptive text and not simply exclude him...
</snip>

I can now see that there is no conflict with the way I have approached
this task in a tableless (for layout anyway) CSS/XHTML standards
compliant site driven by a PHP/MySQL CMS.

The art and pictures are there, with lots of text to help with
understanding and I *will* have pop-ups (deviating from accessibility
and validation) for the full-size images (600-1200px) so that sighted
users can see the big image and the full text by arranging their windows
accordingly - we've got some "then and now" comparisons that only make
sense when you see them side by side.

Thanks for the enlightenment.

Tony