Comment Why I don't think this will work (Score 1) 201
It seems unlikely to me that anything rigid enough to be a federally enforced standard will both catch the significant majority of instances of pages that are difficult to read by handicapped persons, and not rule out a vast number of pages that are not actually difficult to read.
In other words, I don't believe it's just using certain tags, etc., that make a page difficult/easy to read for a handicapped person, anymore than it is for anyone else. That opinion comes from some effort spent in designing pages and imagining how they might "sound" through a speech synthesizer.
If they just mandate ALT tags, alternatives to scripting, etc., this will certainly improve the situation, but not rule out a large number of pages that will be hard to navigate.
But I'd be delighted if a visually impaired person weighed in on this issue!
In other words, I don't believe it's just using certain tags, etc., that make a page difficult/easy to read for a handicapped person, anymore than it is for anyone else. That opinion comes from some effort spent in designing pages and imagining how they might "sound" through a speech synthesizer.
If they just mandate ALT tags, alternatives to scripting, etc., this will certainly improve the situation, but not rule out a large number of pages that will be hard to navigate.
But I'd be delighted if a visually impaired person weighed in on this issue!
