KNOPPIX 8.5.0 released

Posted Mar 21, 2019 23:58 UTC (Thu) by jschrod (subscriber, #1646)
In reply to: KNOPPIX 8.5.0 released by Zenith
Parent article: KNOPPIX 8.5.0 released

That only proves that the term "accessibility" may be interpreted very differently, depending on one's need and focus.

For you, "accessibility" is the ability to read the Web site on a mobile device.
For Adriane, "accessibility" is the ability to read the Web site as a blind person.

I.e., you care primarily for smartphone users, she cares primarily for blind persons.

It is an interesting question which interpretation is more important. While your concern affects more users over all, but they are users who have means to get the information; her concern is about a minority that is much more severly encumbered than your target audience. So, is an inconvenience for a large audience important enough to promote it against the convenience of a disabled minority? Reader's choice.

KNOPPIX 8.5.0 released

Posted Mar 22, 2019 1:20 UTC (Fri) by mpr22 (subscriber, #60784) [Link] (2 responses)

I've always interpreted "accessibility" in computer interface technology as meaning "providing means for people who have sensory/motor/cognitive impairments to use their computers more readily (or at all)".

I don't think I've ever heard the unqualified term "accessibility" used to refer to "it works well on small touchscreens".

KNOPPIX 8.5.0 released

Posted Mar 22, 2019 1:38 UTC (Fri) by jschrod (subscriber, #1646) [Link] (1 responses)

Me too -- that's why I was so suprised that Zenith made that connotation of "accessibility" with "responsive Web design".

First, I wanted to write a flame about the disregard of the difficulties of disabled persons to create a "website [that] is not really optimized for modern browsers or responsive design" [Zenith, start of this thread]. Having disabled firiends, this really irked me.

On 2nd thought, I realized that being able to read a Web site on small-form systems is a kind of accessibility in our world of today -- where many people don't have desktop systems any more, especially in 3rd world countries where people only have smartphones and have no chance at all to use a "real" computer.

So I realized it's really the question who you target with your Web site: as many people as possible (then RWD is a must), or a smaller group (IOW, a minority) where data is much more important than representation.

That question is not easy to answer and depends very much on the situation of the project and the person who's creating the Web site.

Of course, in the best of all worlds, we would have the means for disabled persons to easily create Web sites with a RWD. But -- as an example, go to https://getbootstrap.com/ and try to gather an idea how to create a site design *without being able to see* the information there. IMHO, that's near to impossible. The result of that non-availability are Web sites like ADRIANE that feature data above ease of accessibility for the masses.

KNOPPIX 8.5.0 released

Posted Mar 22, 2019 8:48 UTC (Fri) by Zenith (guest, #24899) [Link]

First off, communication - and most likely, enabling a11y, are both hard :-)

I did not in any way or form intend to slight the work done by ADRIANE and KNOPPIX - and for what it's worth, I am not a web developer so I may be talking out my arse.

Having said that, I did write "not very accessibility enhanced" - what I meant by this is that it is *my* impression that websites that use responsive design often do so via libraries like bootstrap etc, that - again, my impression - support a11y better than what random web developers may be inclined to support by themselves.
They support screen and braille readers via CSS and what not - at least that is my impression.

So in my mind 'responsive ~= a11y'

With all that said, it would be fairly comical if the documentation sites for said responsive design templates themselves are not a11y-enhanced.