>Resent-date: Thu, 16 Mar 2000 07:21:07 -0500 (EST)
>Date: Thu, 16 Mar 2000 07:20:52 -0500
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>From: Kathleen Anderson <[log in to unmask]>
>Subject: The Good Side Of Regulation - Internet World
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>Reply-to: Kathleen Anderson <[log in to unmask]>
>Organization: State Comptroller's Office
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>http://www.internetworld.com/print/current/point/20000315-underdev.html
>
>March 15, 2000
>UNDER DEVELOPMENT
>
>The Good Side Of Regulation
>The Americans With Disabilities Act Will Force Us To Use HTML The Way It Was
>Intended
>By - Nate Zelnick
>
>
>More often than not, any turning point in technology--like any significant
>historical event--is clear only in retrospect. And determining whether
>events are net positive or negative can only be determined when all of the
>ramifications have been explored. When Marc Andreessen and the team at the
>National Center for Supercomputing Applications snuck a simple element to
>add images into Mosaic--the graphical browser that became the basis for
>Netscape Navigator and Internet Explorer--it must have seemed like a minor
>thing. But the unilateral creation of the IMG tag--against the wishes of the
>IETF's HTML Working Group, which had hoped to find a more generic and
>easier-to-implement binary object element--has cascaded into a true
>disaster.
>
>
>You could argue that adding graphics to the Web boosted it out of academe
>and into commerce, but there are two problems with this minor change that
>have been a constant brake on forward momentum. The Mosaic team's decision
>to go with a kludged element syntax made the process of building HTML
>parsing engines harder. But more significantly, the decision opened a
>Pandora's Box of arbitrary HTML extensions that sparked the
>Microsoft/Netscape arms race of proprietary tags that made everybody's job
>more difficult, and more costly, today.
>
>
>Groups like the Web Standards Project were formed ages ago to yell at
>browser makers and explain why standards are vital. But I bring it up again
>because we're quickly approaching an event that will make all the
>ramifications of the Mosaic error much clearer. By the time you read this,
>the federal government will have issued requirements for making all
>government Web sites compliant with the Americans With Disabilities Act. The
>Justice Department has already decided that Web sites aren't exempt from the
>ADA and must provide a way to present data to visually impaired users.
>
>
>If you've ever browsed the Web using a text-to-speech converter, you know
>that most Web pages parse as an endless repetition of the words "Table" and
>"IMG," reflecting the desperate lengths designers go to in a futile attempt
>to control page rendering. Bringing pages into ADA compliance is going to
>rock a lot of boats, but it will also close the standards gap that Mosaic
>opened.
>
>
>Since the easiest way to make pages accessible will be to separate the
>content of a page from how it is presented (which is how HTML was designed
>to work), ADA compliance will also mean that delivering content to cell
>phones, TVs, and other devices will simply mean putting a page into the
>right format for the device when it's requested.
>
>
>You'll hear a lot of whining from big Web sites. They'll say the cost of
>compliance is too high and that it will kill e-commerce. That's short-term
>rhetoric: When we look back at this change a few years hence, we'll wonder
>why we didn't do this in the first place.
>
>
>
>
>Kathleen Anderson, Webmaster
>State of Connecticut
>Office of the State Comptroller
>55 Elm Street, Room 101
>Hartford, Connecticut  06106
>voice: (860) 702-3355  fax: (860) 702-3634
>email: [log in to unmask]
>URL: http://www.osc.state.ct.us
>CMAC Access: http://www.cmac.state.ct.us/access
>
>
>
>

EASI's online workshop on Barrier-free Educational Technology,
Barrier-free Ed-Tech, begins March, 13.
Making campuses accessible is the right thing to do,
and it is the law.  For information, go to
http://www.rit.edu/~easi and click on workshops.