Hi Janina,

Maybe responsible is not the right word, but the example you give about the
color of the house of your neighbour is not a good one. Let give me another
example.
What do you do if your neighbour owns a dog that barks every day and every
night?
You go to a lawyer and a judge should say that this dog can not live
anymore in your neighbours house.
If you are on speaking terms with your neighbour, like you are with the toy
maufacturers, you ask them to do something to stop that daily barking.
That is what I meant by involved and responsible. Because I'm visually
impaired and saw their website was not accessible I point members of this
listing to this website asking them if they know an e-mail address to ask
them to make the website accessible. I did that because I feel myself
responsible to do so. Not because I own this website, but because I want to
see webpages on the Internet accessible for everybody. The only way to get
them all accessible is open your mouth and take your responsibility. It is
not in terms of judgement but a moral responsibility.
I visit a lot of webpages, a lot of them not accessible. I have not always
the time to start a discussion about it with the designers of such a
website. But a website about toys for blind children and the name of the
AFB on it brings me to do something.
Now the pages are accessible. I ask you were they accessible at this moment
if I shut my mouse?

Regards Peter Verhoeven
Internet : http://www.plex.nl/~pverhoe (The Screen Magnifiers Homepage)


At 09:42 7-10-98 -0400, Janina Sajka wrote:
>
>Hi, Peter:
>
>Just one point from your message, please :
>
>On Wed, 7 Oct 1998, Peter Verhoeven wrote:
>
>> AFB is not responsible for the HTML code on that website, but seems to be
>> involved.  In my opinion this means that AFB has a special responsibility
>> to get it accessible.
>AFB has long been involved in evaluating toys for the Manufacturer's
>Association. Since we are also very concerned that web technology be
>accessible, we should, and have urged and insisted that the site be made
>accessible. But, it is not our site, so we cannot bear responsibility for
>what the manufacturer's do with it. This is very much like our neighbor's
>house. We cannot decide to go and paint it a different color, because it
>is not ours.
>
>
>                               Janina Sajka, Director
>                               Information Systems Department
>                               American Foundation for the Blind (AFB)
>
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