RE: What is missing in accessible design?

Thank you, Shelley,

>The challenge then, is to design a website that has "conceptual design" as
>well as accessibility (?)  Why should that be out of the reach of the
>web-design community?

It doesn't have to be. It is, however, what is missing in accessible 
design and that was the point of my response to Kukla Fran and 
Ollie's question.

For years, accessible design discussion groups have had periodic 
topics about how it is possible to have visually compelling sites 
that are quite functional and fully accessible -- the point being to 
demonstrate that accessible design does not have to mean "dumbed 
down" or "designed to the lowest common denominator." The examples 
that get cited always fall short of the mark -- my opinion -- and the 
result has been that we have not proven the point to the larger 
audience of web designers and web surfers. That's a great failing of 
the accessible design movement -- again, my opinion.

When we have these discussions, we often lapse into the perspective 
that our preference for web sites ought to be everyone's preference. 
That just isn't the way things are.

Hope that helps.


. . / tom mcCain


tom(at)crittur.com
http://www.crittur.com
indianapolis, indiana usa

HWG: hwg-basics mailing list archives, maintained by Webmasters @ IWA