cox and accessibility

Fri, 15 Mar 2002 07:05:36 -0700

I would have to look into Mozilla a little more as far as how compliant it
is, because I don't have THAT much experience with it. However with recent
news from all the mozilla engine clones, like you said, hopefully it will be
fully compliant. Unfortuneately, because it is also based off the old
Netscape architecture, that might take a while to BE compliant. Netscape
is/was notorious for writing thier own proprietry standards as far as HTML.
I am *NOT* saying IE is much better, we all know they have some proprietery
stuff in thier browser. However, IE doesn't really differ THAT much fromt he
standards. What they aren't compliant with, they usually do not add thier
own stuff in there as a substitute, where netscape did.. I would say it's
closer to being 85% compliant. However when I say that I am talking about IE
5.5. IE 6 just sucks. When they released IE 6 they released a piece of
garbage. However, on the issue of accessibility options, I have to say that
IE has some VERY impressive stuff in their browser. Certainly not perfect,
but no software is perfect or we wouldn't have discussions like this :) Of
course, now IE 6 that comes with WinXP has both Voice recognition and
utilization software built into it, which is actually causing a few problems
because vendors turn it on by default and the mic port pics up static..heh.

If we ever have a browser that is 100% W3C HTML standard compliant, the
world will probably fall apart. However, with the way the W3C get's
"lobbied" by MS and other companies, I don't see that happening anytime
soon. They need to decide on a standard and say "Thats the way it is!" and
have controlled changes from that point.

Complaining because a website doesn't support X browser MIGHT get them to
redesign it, but I doubt it. The argument that it stops handicapped people
from paying thier bills online will not fly either, because that is not
really a ADA violation. Said handicap person can still drive down there and
pay, or use snail mail. Online Payments would probably be considered a
convienence. Most ADA vilations are done because they don't provide a
reasonable means to accomplish soemthing. Snail mail IS reasonable. Do not
get me wrong. I am not saying it is ok. I am just saying that I wouldn't
send in complaints saying it violates ADA and it's unfair and stupid that
they only support IE and NS, because you'll probably just have some
webmaster looking at it, saying "pfft, whatever jackass" and throw it away.
I would just see if you can find any way to convince them, rationally, to
support the other browsers, considering thier history with Linux (which is a
good one btw) they might say "hey, sure, we can double check, make sure it
will work."  Otherwise they can, justifiably, ay "Go get NS for Linux then,
otherwise, shut up" You can never win an argument (with a corporation) by
yelling :)

----- Original Message -----
From: "Carl Parrish" <cparrish@cox.net>
To: "Plug-discuss" <plug-discuss@lists.plug.phoenix.az.us>
Sent: Friday, March 15, 2002 1:58 AM
Subject: Re: cox and accessibility

> Personally I'd like to think that mozilla is close to 100% standard
> compliance. (if you know of something that doesn't work the way the
> standards say they should Please do tell). Opera is getting closer and
> closer (for a while they were more standard compliant than we were.)
> I've never used Konq but I hear they are striving for standard
> compliance. And then they are all the browsers coming out using the
> mozilla engine (AOL, IBM, Skipstone, Netscape, K-Meleon, Q.BATi, Galeon,
> etc...) M$ seems to be the only ones getting further and further away
> from the standards. I don't see what's so hard about asking web
> developers to design to the standards I haven't seen anything yet that
> M$ does with its propertiry tags that can't be done a standards way. And
> while they are getting further away from the standards I'd say that IE
> 6.0 is about 70% standards compliant. (though I'll admit that other 30%
> does bug me at times). So for the most part if you design your site to
> the standard *everyone* can see your site isn't that a *good* thing?
>
> Carl P.
>
> On Thu, 2002-03-14 at 17:34, Dr. Ghastly wrote:
> > Quite frankly I don't see why they have to cater to the linux community.
It
> > would be NICE yes, but not something required by law. Or are you going
to
> > complain about every web site that doesn't support your browser and only
> > supports IE and Netscape? If so, then by all means go right ahead..
> >
> > Also, can I see some source code proof showing they intentionally,
through
> > thier cgi, jscript, whatever, throw you an error for not using IE or NS?
Or
> > is it that, because the HTML standard is BEYOND messed up between ALL
> > browsers, that it's really hard and cumbersome to program for all types?
> > >From what i've seen of the HTML standards, and how each browser
implements
> > them, no browser is any where near perfect.
> >
> > ----- Original Message -----
> > From: "der.hans" <PLUGd@LuftHans.com>
> > To: <plug-discuss@lists.plug.phoenix.az.us>
> > Sent: Thursday, March 14, 2002 5:29 PM
> > Subject: RE: cox and accessibility
> >
> >
> > > Am 14. Mar, 2002 schwätzte Craig White so:
> > >
> > > > I think that you are giving them some undeserved credit...they
probably
> > > > only checked it with the big 2 browsers. If you've created web
sites,
> > >
> > > This isn't checking the web site. They're intentionally throwing an
error
> > if
> > > you're not using one of those two browsers.
> > >
> > > > the larger branches of govt have all laid off of the cable
companies -
> > > > leaving them to negotiate their exclusive contracts with the
> > > > municipalities which of course, have little technical savvy to deal
with
> > > > them.
> > >
> > > Hrumph. That sucks. I'm still going to keep researching it.
> > >
> > > > there is a netscape and a mozilla available for linux - you might
want
> > > > to have one of them ready for desparate times...I do.
> > >
> > > Not always an option. It also doesn't address the problem. I was able
to
> > > work around it, but I want it fixed.
> > >
> > > ciao,
> > >
> > > der.hans
> > > --
> > > #  http://home.pages.de/~lufthans/   http://www.DevelopOnline.com/
> > > # We now return you to your regularly scheduled paranoia...
> > >
> > > ________________________________________________
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doesn't
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