RE: [SEC508] Can AJAX find harmony on agency Web sites?

["Mark D. Urban" <docurban@nc.rr.com>]

Sailesh puts his finger on one of the most important concepts that I hope
the new 508 committee will address - namely, that the legal standard of
"comparable access" is not always met by conforming to the standards.

For example, a form that is "readable by assistive technology" [(1194.22)
(n)] is not necessarily in the order that a person without a disability
might find.  Also, in an AJAX environment, the form might CHANGE
dynamically, without some mechanism to inform the user. Does having to
re-read the form after every entry, and then navigating to the spot you just
filled out, qualify as being comparable to the person w/o a disability that
simply views the changes in the form and keeps on going?  

Hardly, in my opinion.


Regards,
-Mark D. Urban 
919-395-8513 (cell)
Chair, North Carolina Governor's Advocacy Council for Persons with
Disabilities

Keep up with the latest in worldwide accessibility at
(http://www.icdri.org/)

-----Original Message-----
From: sec508-admin@trace.wisc.edu [mailto:sec508-admin@trace.wisc.edu] On
Behalf Of Sailesh Panchang
Sent: Tuesday, July 18, 2006 9:14 AM
To: sec508@trace.wisc.edu
Subject: RE: [SEC508] Can AJAX find harmony on agency Web sites?

> ... pages would be just as accessible, just much less efficient and thus >
less usable.

There is a fine distinction but efficiency is to some extent a part of
accessibility. Being able  to 'get to' content or basic accessibility is not
enough if one cannot perform a task with reasonable efficiency. Else there
is no 'equivalent facilitation'.
That is why the skip nav provision or several  checkpoints of WCAG 1.0  are
in the realm of accessibility and not usability.
Sailesh Panchang
Senior Accessibility Engineer
Deque Systems Inc. (www.deque.com)
11180 Sunrise Valley Drive, Suite #400,
Reston VA 20191
Phone: 703-225-0380 (ext 105)
E-mail: sailesh.panchang@deque.com

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