A bit tortured, but worth reading anyway, IMHO.

Peter and Gifford

+== acb-l Message from Charles Crawford <[log in to unmask]> ==+
      I have been doing a great deal of thinking about the issues
that Kelly and others have raised on the list with respect to the
consistency of our message in the context of what I would call
"actions speaking louder than words."  I suppose this is because
I am a fan of guiding principles that transcend individual
situations to keep us going in a valued direction, and I am not
content to simply chalk up inconsistent behavior to a simple
relativistic answer.  So I guess I owe a debt of gratitude to
Kelly and others for reminding me of my own angst, and I can only
take solace in that it seems to be part and parcel to being a
member of ACB.  So if you are interested in my thinking out loud
on this notion of what is ultimately fair, then here goes.  If
not, then I fully understand your wanting to avoid sinking into
the depths of uncertainty to arrive at what might or might not be
an answer.

      It seems to me that the underlying principle to web
accessibility is "what is offered to all must be available to
all."  Once we publicly subscribe to that idea, then we are bound
to conducting our business in a manner that is consistent with
our articulated principles.  Well, that was easy.  End of case;
are Kelly and the others right?  Put in this way, I guess I would
have to agree.  But wait...

      So if we are to obey the law which is the thing we were
taught to do, then how is it that civil disobedience has gained
currency with so many of us?  If we are not to kill, then how can
we engage in wars against those we consider evil, kill in self
defense, or for many it is ok to put people to death for crimes
that are unspeakable?  If even God, (if you are a Christian)
dared to heal on the Sabbath, then is there any principle that
holds itself eternal and deserving of complete adherence?  Looks
like the solution or reconciliation must lye deeper than the
conflict since the very elements of the conflict all claim to be
serving the same principle.

      We should not kill since life is sacred.  Yet if we don't
kill what is trying to kill us, then our lives are not sacred?
We should obey the law since law is the road map of a civilized
society, yet laws that have specific objectives to preserve order
lose their legitimacy when they operate to oppress people.  We
should observe our holy days if we hold to any religion, but the
day is an objective symbol of a religious foundation which itself
is more important to be served than its rituals, or as Saint Paul
used to say; the law is unto death and the spirit unto life.

      OK, so what?  Does this make everyone right or everyone
wrong?  Do these exceptions to the rule destroy the standard?  Is
all of this just making the waters muddy and obscuring the
obvious hypocrisy of preaching access and using an inaccessible
service to further our goals?  So are we back to square 1?  No,
not really.

      Inherent in the exceptions we often find to a principle is
the notion that there are deeper principles that must be observed
since they give legitimacy to the very principle being used to
assert the hypocrisy.  Hence and this is important, the reason
for that which is offered to all being available to all must be
that there is a greater value to the idea of an "all" to begin
with.  This establishes a philosophical frame that not only
validates the idea of equal access, but also sets a priority of
viewing the principle in the context of servicing the best
interest of the society that itself is the "all" to which we want
everything to be available.

      So this creates the mega question.  If we insist that we
must behave in a manner that upholds our principles, then do we
not also have an obligation to make sure that those principles
are coherent with the larger context of values in which they find
their legitimacy?  This holistic construction holds that every
part or principle must co-exist with all other parts to form the
larger truth that is being upheld.

      Translating this to real terms is the difficulty.  Is there
some lofty principle such as self-defense, preventing oppression,
or serving  (no pun intended) a greater good that mitigates our
principle or not?  Yes there is.

      It is that we don't live in voids and it is important for
ACB to honor both our relative and positive place as a member of
society as well as those interests we need to advance in
furthering our well being as a blind community.  In short, the
golden rule of doing unto others as we would have them do unto
us.

      If we were to take the position that we will not work with
others until they meet our standards and never violate that
position, then we better like our own company since we will be
spending a great deal of time together.  If on the other hand we
took the other extreme of accepting whatever comes down the pike,
then we would be dishonoring ourselves and even our society for
not taking a contributory role in it.  Thus, doing unto others as
we would have them do unto us presumes a value for both and a set
of shared standards that ultimately get realized through good
faith and sometimes even law enforcement.

      So yes, we uphold our standard of what is offered to all
must be available to all by conveying the need in positive terms
to others, offering our help in getting them there so we both are
served, and in those cases where we are spurned despite our
efforts; we take the legal routes available to us.

      So the CharityMall and 4Charity issues boil down to a mutual
arrangement aimed at serving multiple needs and making the good
faith effort to cure any violations of our standards.
Fortunately they appear to be working out.

      There are however two important concepts that arise for me
from this somewhat laborious and tortured exercise.  First, we
must not become so embroiled in our own zeal to further our
points so as to exclude our deeper want and responsibility to
create and serve a more just society.  Second, we should see this
as a reminder of the wisdom of the founders of ACB who made it
clear that we stand for working within the system when we can and
use our collective force when we have to.

      Well of course there were two other issues raised in regard
to this whole thing that I also need to think through.  The first
is the question of is there a point where economic considerations
become more important than serving our principles, and the second
is irrespective of our intent, are we leaving ourselves open to
the accusation or appearance of inappropriate behavior?

      In the first instance there clearly is a temptation to find
a reason to justify whatever money we might earn from our
participation in various fund raising activities that some might
see as objectionable.  If we had engaged ourselves without first
having made clear to the web sites that we expected them to come
up to snuff and combining that with the ultimate option to file a
complaint with the Department of Justice as we advised
GreaterGood a year ago that we would do, then we truly may have
entered the realm of compromising our principles.  I do not
believe we did that, but rather we viewed the issue from the
broader context and made certain our values and goals were on
track.

      In the second area of appearances we faced a more difficult
problem.  While I personally believe that paying too much
attention to this kind of thinking leads to paralysis and that
confidence in the merit of what one is doing must guide ones
behavior, the appearance of compromised principles even when not
true, can be detrimental to our advancement.  From the religious
frame of reference which you have probably noticed I have studied
to some degree, there is the concept that the devil's original
name was the "accuser."  This is relevant since it contains the
dynamic that accusation and self-doubt can be very destructive,
when not balanced against the value and merit of a behavior.  In
the end therefore I would conclude that accusations and
appearances will stand or fall in the face of what is being done
and those who accuse must ultimately be responsible for their
accusations to themselves.  Otherwise we would spend more time
worrying about what people might say rather than doing what we
know to be right.  This is not to say that we should pay no
attention to the need to avoid appearances of inappropriate
behavior, but it is our confidence in what we do as being correct
that must guide our actions and not the potential for accusations
that falsely limit progress.

      Thanks for hanging in there with me as I went through my
examination of conscience.  I don't know how much it may have
helped you, but I think it was worth the effort and of course I
am always open to your ideas to throw me back into the thought
mill.

-- charlie Crawford.


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