68 Responses to “Luca Passani is wrong in my opinion – discrimination isn’t good for business”

1. 

   Sean Owen 19 February 2007 at 5:12 pm #

   I think reasonable people can disagree about your lift example. Accessibility is a social goal with a social cost and there is some line beyond which the benefits outweigh costs. The question is where the line is, and what even the goal is: accessibility merely to enter a building? accessibility to all buildings? access to substantially the same community resources?

   Anyway, Luca rightly brings this question to web accessibility. I don’t read into his original comments any hints at discrimination or second-class citizenship. We all agree that society should bear reasonable costs to equalize the opportunities of all citizens; it can’t bear infinite cost so the question is how much and how; where’s the line. Your examples show situations that fall on one side of this line, on the line, and on the other side.

   So let’s take that question to the web. One can’t reserve some percentage of the web site for users with accessibility needs; that’s not how it works. On one end, you can build a customized fully-accessible web site separate from your main site. Expensive and not very one-web is it. On the other end you can try to author your site correctly so that, for example, users can enlarge the font while not destroying the site’s layout. You can use meaningful structural markup to aid transcoders and screen readers.

   I think the latter is the most realistic, lowest-cost, fastest way to make the web accessible. I think Luca agrees. Rather than berate site owners for not building an accessible site, turn them on to the benefits of proper web authoring. Indeed, the solution will be in good tools on the user’s end. I think WCAG falls somewhere between these two extremes. Just as laws require buildings to *enable* access by wheelchair-bound citizens, it’s the wheelchair that really gets them around. I think we need to first focus on user-side tools, while simultaneously reasonably exhorting sites to be friendly to these tools. Presto: no disabling of the web.

   On a related point — WCAG is a relatively heavy-handed specification which defines activities that are morally and legally motivated. People don’t make sites accessible for primarily business reasons. mobileOK is a similar specification, but, there is no such moral or legal imperative to build mobile-friendly sites. Luckily, there are clear business reasons. But, I think it means that we rightly had to shift thinking away from the WCAG mindset of “how can we make sure those forced to adopt this won’t cheat” to “how can we make sure that conformance to each of these requirements is clearly worth the effort?” I believe the outcome has been great in this regard.
2. computer - somdaj.com » Luca Passani is wrong in my opinion - discrimination isn’t good for business

   [...] Original post by Segala and software by Elliott Back   [...]
3. 

   Marten van Wezel 19 February 2007 at 9:59 pm #

   Let’s add another example:

   All race car manufacturers should be fined into compliance until they build racecars for blind people.

   Ha-ha yes I know my example is a touch more silly, but still, as Sean mentioned, the question is not if we should actively deny people access because ‘we hate their kind’, but if people should be penalized for not catering to everybody’s needs. Which site builder, if the effort is worth it, or negligible, would still refuse to welcome some specific group? Instead, the situation is more complex, and often, people who enter into this fight come into it from some politically correct high-horse perspective that says that everybody should be equal and treated equal at all cost.

   And, uh, THEY ARE NOT, and THEY SHOULD NOT, respectively.

   Another small example. Assume some site indeed perfectly supports disabled/special needs people. Cool. Then a group of eskimos starts picketing your front door because they want to read your website too. (they were recently evicted from their igloo and are now fugitives in your country, they don’t speak your language, so they have a -ha- special need too.).

   Do you feel we should hire translators to translate a site into every language known to man, simply because the possibility of a Xhosa warrior that was bored and clicked (*chuckle*) by might possibly want to see the site too?

   Do you want to demand of little Johnny, 6, that his first website advertising his yard sale of ‘gread ztuf!’ on the net to be braille-friendly or we will sue his little disabled-people-hating-hiny!

   No, and no.

   The only balanced way that I consider fair, is a bit of a cold one:
   - Every individual/business should be allowed to choose what they want to do, based on their own business sense (and perhaps: finances)
   - If they want to support the specific ‘disabled’ group of people, then we should have a subset of -additional- guidelines for these people.
   - Public service sites (like those maintained by the government) should be more accessible, and we – the people – should pay for this overhead by means of taxes.
   - If a disabled person would want to see a specific website work for him/her, they should indeed use some translating proxy, or, perhaps, mail the administratrion of that site. That way the admins will know that the (business?) case for supporting a specific group is growing stronger.
   - In the specific mobile case, chances are that a group with disabilities will need a translating system anyway. Blind people will need a ‘braille proxy’ for example. The proxy is there, let’s enhance it.
4. 

   Pablo Schaffner 19 February 2007 at 10:56 pm #

   I agree with Sean and Martin. I think their examples are the best, though i’ll like to give my comment about it. I don’t think Luca was discriminating with disabled people, but rather just being illustrative about a reality.

   It is really difficult to work in the mobile arena, and Luca has greatly simplified our lifes with WURFL. I think we should make the effort to “enable” the web and mobile to disabled people and not the way around. We have to strive for what we want to communicate and to whom we want to send the message first, then adapt it.

   Let’s take a blind person, for example. If a blind person wants to “watch” a tv commercial, i don’t think it’s discrimmination that the advertising company doesn’t make it braille enabled, because it was, at first place and glance, made for people who could actually see the adversing, and in a certain way, made specially to use a capacity they can use (sight in this case), in which a braille enable commercial like that would be pretty pointless.

   The same goes for mobile sites and devices. If you want people with a hearing incapacity to use a phone, well i think it’s not worth the effort to force all phone device companies to make all their devices capable of representing all spoken data on their screen and not putting great capabilities a lot of people can use because some won’t be able to, but rather to make a special phone device for those people with that need, and thus enabling what can be enabled.

   But in reallity, most people are not disabled. You shouldn’t be force or force everybody to make everything to everyone accesible, because at the end your product may be very compatible but certainly won’t be great, and the people may not understand as well your product because of the limitating compatible interface you used.

   This is why i think Luca is right and he is not discriminating.
   It’s the only real way to make things real.
5. 

   Paul Walsh 19 February 2007 at 11:17 pm #

   Sean – I think part of the solution lies with authoring tools. It’s not the entire solution. In fact, user agents have their part to play also. The W3C actually has guidelines for these stake holders [1] [2]. The W3C doesn’t place all of the emphasis on authors.

   I agree that WCAG is morally motivated, but in short, the guidelines are best practice design techniques that should be employed by Web developers anyway. Well, most of them anyway. Some are outdated and some are very difficult to implement. However, most of them are straight forward most of the time. Arguably WCAG 2.0 can be deemed heavy handed.

   Some people do actually make sites accessible for business reasons. For example, a site that is made accessible using WCAG is almost impossible to further improve for search engine optimisation, with the exception of a few things, such as copy. I’d like to invite someone from Google to correct me on this point.

   Regarding your point about mobileOK, the fact that we started with WCAG to create the Best Practices demonstrates my point – that is, accessibility for people helps with our cause for device independence.

   I’m in total agreement that we should encourage people to adopt accessibility best practices for all the positive reasons. I hate the use of the stick and have publicly slated industry reports that go out of their way to embarrass specific organisations.

   [1] Guidelines for authoring tools vendors
   http://www.w3.org/WAI/intro/atag.php

   [2] Guidelines for User Agents
   http://www.w3.org/WAI/intro/uaag.php
6. 

   Paul Walsh 19 February 2007 at 11:25 pm #

   Marten – your first example is just plain silly. It’s very easy to use silly extreme examples to demonstrate a point, but it does very little to ‘backup’ your point.

   I agree that some people speak about accessibility with a degree of political correctness. However, I’m not one of those people and I hope, my post demonstrates a balanced view.

   Eskimos? Emmm, not sure if that’s less or more silly that your first example. I can only suggest that you read my post again.
7. 

   Paul Walsh 19 February 2007 at 11:33 pm #

   Pablo – you’re right. Luca has done a great deal for mobile. Unfortunately he’s adding very little benefit to the acceleration of the Web on mobile phones IMHO. Luca has a fantastic appreciation for mobile technology. However, I don’t think he is realistic with his ambition to limit mobile users with WAP sites. The W3C is basically going to replace what he has with a standardised interface to help developers better understand the technical capabilities of mobile devices.

   Your example about hearing plug-ins for mobile users is spot on. As I’ve said, if the cost of making something accessible to everyone is cost prohibitive then don’t do it. Provide an alternative. It’s very easy to take parts of my post and respond out of context.

   Referring to your ‘most people aren’t disabled’ paragraph is full of obvious statements. However, the fact that you say most people aren’t disabled worries me. It sounds as if you don’t care just because there ‘aren’t that many’. I’ve taken this out of context, so perhaps I’ve misinterpreted what you meant.

   Interestingly, the annual spending power of the disabled community is £50 billion. I wouldn’t mind have a slice of that small humble pie
8. 

   Paul Walsh 19 February 2007 at 11:35 pm #

   Readers of these comments might be interested in my view on Mobile Web http://segala.com/blog/web-on-the-move-anytime-anywhere/
9. 

   kenneth gf brown 19 February 2007 at 11:37 pm #

   wwoooo … an unmittigated personal attack…
   nice…. congradulations to luca for ‘making’ it

   I find it interesting and to tell the truth mostly anoying that we are to soon all use
   82pt type in all the documentation we write and to
   have mobile devices the size of a damn briefcase…(AGAIN)
   so that someone can see the screen using a telescope 53 miles away

   in addition It seams to be a wasted effort for accessability to such things as the extreame rock climbing site I visit.. or am I just being unreasonable?

   wait… damn u all.. the route to the top of everest is not wheelchair accessable!! holly crap lads… we need a ramp.. lets get at it!!!

   furthermore my disability is greatly underscored by the fact that a damn T9 programme cant deliver the word I WANT to use faster than the alpha entry setting.

   besides my fingers are too phat.
   and I cant spell… (in 5 languages)

   but wait we can get around this by installing text readers on all our outmoded wap1 phones… or better yet “you talk it typos” software for everyone! dragon naturally speaking would love this… and productivity would fall as I listen to the marketing team dictate the crap they try and ram down a client’s throat

   in addition…. how does one

   “Leaving the difficulties of developing Web sites that
   will work on mobile devices aside;”

   and deliver a sentient arguement with
   any thing wurfl related?

   most of your argument apears to be bemoning the web and web sites… THESE ARE NOT RELATED TO WURFL and
   the design and deployment of mobile sites….

   how can you argue against a position and ignore the basic tennant of that position

   untill a manufacture give you a 17in. diagonal screen on your cell phone that u can then render in 640×480 so the pixels are large enuf to be read across the room… well…. I don’t see that anywhere on the horizon…. and I don’t think
   that motorolla is gonna roll one out any time soon… except for
   the hacked together floor modles for trade show purposes…

   your vent and relating it to an elevator issue,
   or bitching and providing yet more free marketing (and a link) to an organisation you bemoan as a bad example of accessability…. who were “slated in the press and reaping the benefit of free PR ”

   ahhhh the argumentation is stunning….
   GAHHHH

   god damnit people TRY using VIEW –> TEXT SIZE –> LARGEST and stop
   making every thing in the world a POS because
   less than 1% of the population cant access it

   in addition and as a final point
   YOUR site is NOT as accessability
   friendly… is that RED or GREEN or a PALE GREY
   on the side links????

   and wait y are the links in 7pt type and NOT underscored

   practice + preach != lamma

   one day there’s gonna be a
   backlash to all this crap

   mutter mutter
   nevermind

   kenneth gf brown
   ceo shadowplay.net
10. 

    Paul Littlebury 19 February 2007 at 11:43 pm #

    Disability has been a low priority in web design for many years, and in doing so ignoring a large audience. I welcome the W3C move, and following accessibility guidelines not only assists in good coding and design practice, it enables sites to have more reach. The guidelines are not there to restrict development, but to ensure that accessibility and coding standards are included in the scope of a project.

    I believe that the WWW is probably tired of processing bloated media-heavy sites, that are largely pointless. I know I am. If the dissenters are saying the the new guidelines will be costly and difficult to implement from business and/or marketing perspective, lets hear some actual examples. Rather than meaningless comparisons. I am sure there were similar complaints of costs, overheads when someone dared to suggest subtitles for television programmes.

    The knee-jerk reaction to web accessibility movement has been disappointing to-date, and this article and responses has highlighted this. The web has been filled with so many sub-standard and overblown web sites, it is not only accessibility that has suffered – quality has also suffered.

    Examples given in preceding comments against the enforcement of guidelines are weak, as they are selected carefully to maximise the even weaker argument against web accessibility. I see the effort as maintaining the standards of the web. How can you truly know your audience, unless you enable them with the ability to access “your world”?
11. 

    Marten van Wezel 19 February 2007 at 11:45 pm #

    I disagree. A very wise man once said that if you wish to make something a law, you must be prepared to accept the extreme outcomes of that law. This specific man (Voltaire) said: ‘freedom of speech cannot be granted in degrees’. The point applies here, I think.

    To specify:
    - Yeah, my examples of race cars and eskimos might SEEM a bit silly, but they are intended to illustrate a point, and in my opinion they do. Applying your rules to all mobile sites will indeed please/appease the disabled people, however I feel that you then will have to apply your rules to ALL special needs groups. Who are you to decide that people who are (say) deaf are special ‘enough’ to be catered for, and that people who are -say- illiterate aren’t, so they don’t deserve a voicebook transcript of the site.

    The only way to be truely fair when it comes to catering to minorities is to cater to ALL minorities, to cater to NO minorities, or to cater to the minorities YOU consider wortwhile (based on your best attempt at a legitimate reason, and hopefully not discriminatory).

    Catering to all minorities is obviously impossible, and trying to separate out some minorities based on generic rules is an untenable position. Hence I suggest you go for pragmatic door #3.

    Additionally I wanted to remark that the inherent simplicity of mobile sites makes them ideal candidates for perfect automated translation into target groups (like braille readers).
12. 

    Paul Walsh 20 February 2007 at 12:00 am #

    Kenneth, take a deep breath before you give yourself a heart attack

    I’ll reply to one of your points as it was the only one that seemed to make sense (to me). That is, your point regarding our own site.

    We launched the site on Friday, so we not only have teething issues to resolve, we still have to create an alternative format for some users which may have difficulty with colour contrast. Yes, you could argue that it’s not Triple-A compliant. But we are practicing what we preach, that is, make a commitment for the long-term by improving accessibility over time. We are not extreme practitioners preaching to the world!

    Our old site was whiter than white. We did this not only to make it as accessible as possible technically, we did it because it was hammered constantly by validators and analysers. Some people (not you necessarily) take a quick look and make an immediate judgement based on limited knowledge. We no longer care about what people think if all they want to do is check one or two checkpoints that they think are important.

    However, we are also demonstrating that you can make partial claims of accessibility using Content Labels. Content Labels help search engines and browsers detect web sites that make assertions of some kind. There is a W3C initiative responsible for creating user profiles using metadata – because WCAG don’t reflect user profiles.
13. 

    Paul Walsh 20 February 2007 at 12:03 am #

    “How can you truly know your audience, unless you enable them with the ability to access “your world”?”

    Paul – I like it.
14. 

    Paul Walsh 20 February 2007 at 12:11 am #

    Marten – “Applying your rules to all mobile sites”. What rules are you referring to? I stated that only the relevant WCAG points were used for the MWI Best Practices. The MWI is driven and reviewed by mobile stake holders such as operators, content providers, content adaptation experts, browser vendors and handset vendors. That is, people who get mobile.

    I agree with your point regarding the law. There is no law that applies to content accessed via mobile devices. The law that applies to the Web in the UK is a little woolly to say the least. I personally believe that the law assumes the Web accessed via a desktop PC. However, who’s to say it doesn’t apply to mobile devices today (however silly it may be to us).

    Furthermore, the current legalisation under the DDA argues against your point, it states “make reasonable adjustment” – thereby not enforcing the extreme. But as you say, what’s that anyway.

    “(based on your best attempt at a legitimate reason, and hopefully not discriminatory).” – I agree!
15. 

    Paul Littlebury 20 February 2007 at 12:11 am #

    This has started something!

    We could have a debate until end of time on what counts as disability, but isnt it better to focus on the wider picture of web accessibility. It isnt a matter of which minority is worthy of your website’s attention – it is down to a company/individual to make it as easy or as difficult to read or understand. What is done on this level will affect your audience – in terms scale of audience, and that audiences perception’s of you. There are plenty of websites out there catering for minorities needs, with advice, information and entertainment. As with any “law”, it has a subtext, and I believe the subtext of web accessibility is better quality.

    Martin: I take your point regards the potential ramifications of the enforcement of these guidelines. The countries that have enforced this as a legal requirement, have gone a little too far maybe. There is always exception cases for any rule. But in QA, I have seen a downturn is quality from user perspective, despite the exciting technology and development evolutions. I still maintain that these accessibility measures will help in the long term.
16. 

    Sam Falaki 20 February 2007 at 12:12 am #

    What a ridiculous article. And the analogies, simply amazing. It’s almost impossible writing web pages accessible by all mobiles, handled by very capable people, now this. Typical of the corporatish consultantish ‘experts’. I think the author is simply jealous of Luca Pasani, someone who’s out there ‘doing it’ everyday, as opposed to writing philosophical nonsense.
17. 

    Paul Walsh 20 February 2007 at 12:20 am #

    Sam – I think you missed the point.

    My point is that we should try to make goods and services as accessible as possible. I didn’t mean that Web sites which are accessible on desktop computers should be equally accessible to people with disabilities when using mobile devices. Lord knows it’s difficult getting accessibility right on the desktop today.

    Jealous of Luca? No. We simply have two different views on the future of ‘the’ Web on mobile devices.

    http://segala.com/blog/web-on-the-move-anytime-anywhere/
    This is where the debate regarding the mobile web vs WAP should take place.
18. 

    Paul Littlebury 20 February 2007 at 12:22 am #

    In order to learn, it is useful to discuss. Chaos is fun to work in, and great for creativity – but at what cost? I believe we are all professional people talking here, with many years of experience through many “revolutions”. No-one is interested in making something out of nothing – that is not what I am in technology for. Luca made a statement that smacked of someone who has lost imagination (hopefully a temporary lapse). Rather than make assumptions on those you cannot see, or do not know, maybe interract rather than exploding like a irrational teenager.
19. 

    Paul Walsh 20 February 2007 at 12:23 am #

    BTW Luca first used analogies to demonstrate his point. I then used analogies to demonstrate mine. Neither of us were/are debating about making ‘mobile content’ accessible to people with disabilities.
20. 

    Marten van Wezel 20 February 2007 at 12:30 am #

    A little back-story then.

    My experience originates in the internet community world. I’ve operated multiple of such beasts. As an admin you get thrust into the role of judge, jury and executioner. And, since Ive tried to be open and fair about this all, Ive encountered a ton of pitfalls that a lot of lawmakers (those british ones included, appearantly) fail to appreciate.

    What it comes down to is this: Rules have to be ABSOLUTE. There can be no discussion about exceptions and ‘fairness’, the fairness needs to be implicit and explicit in the wording of the rules themselves. To try to call for ‘reasonability’ is to call for anarchy when people start to challenge eachothers boundraries.

    Hence my quite dogmatic fallback to hardcore basics.

    Which rules in this case, well you yourself said “… help developers ensure that they build Web sites which are accessible to as many users as possible, including people with disabilities.”.

    To try to help them, fine. To suggest ways to do this, sure, but to DEMAND certain things of web programmers because otherwise a site might not be viewed with BrailleReaderZeta 1.25b is folly. And that is, I feel, the problem with the W3C effort, they are trying to account for everything and anything, thereby sacrificing any hope of a viable ‘modern’ site.

    The fact that the MWI is backed by ‘stakeholders’ is quite irrelevant, they can be wrong, or have alterior motives. (Simpeler page baseline means simpler devices means less investment cost, for example)

    Anyway, in the end I think most of us here try to make a positive effort to improve the mobile internet world, however I feel W3C is in fact hurting this movement by trying to impose needlessly limiting demands.
21. 

    kenneth gf brown 20 February 2007 at 12:44 am #

    a partial claim to accessability is like being only partially racist… either you ARE or you are not…

    a lame excues like
    we’ve only been live since friday is pretty much the same argument that your inaccessable web site used that you took offence to ….. see your example 3

    oh and hey on that topic… that “whiter than white comment” i take offence to that… you racist bastartds!!

    see where taking things to extreems gets you.
    any turn of phrase can get you into serious problems

    and as the rest of the points in the comment that must have missed you… how about this…

    WEB != MOBILE
    mobile != 1024×768 + 32M colours
    mobile != 3GB of onbaord memmory
    mobile != upgrade any time the end user wants to.
    mobile != javascript
    mobile != ajax
    mobile != a screen bigger than 1″ square with 3 lines of text…

    hmmm the list goes on…
    trust me it goes WAY ON!!!

    you’re lucky its all not black and white or
    in some cases an amber and black lcd

    as to meta tags in the content… laf
    have u every tried to construct a wml page ?? or a chtml page…
    or for that matter an xhtml-mp page…

    in MOST cases your accessability addons will cause the entire site to come crashing about your ears…
    take that to the ceo and smoke it.

    and its not because we are discriminating… its because there is no room on the damn device to store the x86 processor the text to speach translator and the u talk it typoes software you appear to desperatly need. in addition without making the device the size of a desktop computer there is going to be little abitlity to make the screen ACCESSABLE to everyone on the planet.

    as to the heart attack… dude…
    seriously… im very calm…

    just tired of unmittigated personal attacks based on taking comments on MOBILE interfaces out of CONTEXT and
    some how translating them as statements made regarding the internet as a WHOLE and Delivering them in an open FORUM …

    you might be looking at a liable lawsuit… as what luca was commenting on and how your editorial has twisted it … well…
    lets just say that it reads like your declaring luca as a anti disabled neo nazi warrior on a mission to deny them access to the net…. i personally would have called my lawyer….

    you are basicly saying in your title alone that luca is a bastard who is the SOLE reason that there is inaccessability in the online world. cuz most people wouldnt read further thatn your title and the first para abstract… nice…

    u know what … discrimination IS good…
    i discriminate against NAZI’s, right (or left) wing nutbars,
    religious fundamentalists and racist bastards all the time….
    in addition I dont have to conduct business with EVERYONE im allowd to decide who i will write code for and who i wont…

    i also tend to discriminate against all the PCbusibodies who have too much time on their hands… have done little real work on the topic they stick thier noses into… AND grossly liable the people who actually do….

    sad really… 5 days online and your already skirting a big lawsuit…. luca… load the litigation gun… fire away.
22. 

    Paul Walsh 20 February 2007 at 12:51 am #

    Marten – what’s a modern site?

    Background on me then so it’s in context – I’m Chair of the British Interactive Media Association – a trade association for the digital industry, specifically for creative industry. I stared with 25 people in a porter cabin at AOL in 1995 when people said things like ‘as if online marketing will take off’, as if you could do this, as if you could do that’… I’ve heard it all before. Yet mobile technology is improving much faster than the desktop ever did.

    So, I get creative and I get the need to express content in a creative way. However, what is creative? Is it Google.com or is it a site that’s full of flash jumping all over the place?

    The W3C doesn’t impose anything. It simply creates standards to ‘harmonize’. You don’t have to use them if you don’t want to. However, I’m sure you wouldn’t argue that standards such as HTML aren’t a tad bit useful?!

    Lastly, Apple and Nokia agree with me. They think the desktop Web will hit our mobile phones and they know a little more about what looks cool and what’s coming our way technically.
23. 

    Paul Walsh 20 February 2007 at 12:57 am #

    Kenneth – I stopped reading after your 3rd paragraph (I really did) so I can’t comment on anything you said after that. What I can say is that accessibility isn’t black and white.

    It will be impossible to make everything accessible to everyone all of the time. It’s about making reasonable adjustments… please don’t bother posting any more comments if you are going to hurl insults.

    I’m not afraid to demonstrate that Segala is not perfect, just like every other company.
24. 

    Paul Littlebury 20 February 2007 at 1:14 am #

    I think Kenneth either has to stop taking his unperscribed sweets, or start taking his perscribed ones. Ranting from an ivory tower of perfection is a precarious standpoint, especially communicating via extreme outbursts. It is also short-term thinking. Rules always bring out the child-like instinctive resistance in us, but I think the perception here is overblown. Web Accessibility laws is not the Criminal Justice Bill, and the only real result of these efforts will be better quality web – the potential increased time/effort will be filling the time/effort that should have been applied in development in the first place. The www is not a toy
25. 

    Alejandro Guerrieri 20 February 2007 at 2:07 am #

    Paul’s view, while surely well motivated and aimed at making life easier and fairer to all people in the world, crashes against the cold truth:

    No matter what you and I could wish, we are not all made the same: we have different needs, different abilities and there’s NO way in the world to provide a “universal” device that allows _everyone_ to use it having or not having any sort of disability. It’s a shame, but it’s the way it is.

    It’s already _quite_ difficult to achieve accesibility on the web. It’s IMPOSSIBLE on nowaday’s mobile devices.

    Most mobile devices are NOT ACCESSIBLE by their selves. I mean: what’s really DISABLED it’s the MOBILE DEVICES.

    There’s no point in trying to force best practices and at the same time achieve compatibility with thousands (yes, thousands) of different devices. I think general usability should come before special accessibility.

    Please note: I’m not saying that disabled people should be left out, but there’s _always_ a line to be drawn and the technology on devices forces the line to be located way far that most of us would wish.

    I couldn’t agree more with Luca regarding web usability. I think W3C efforts, while well-minded, will crash against reality with nowadays devices. Special content-adaptation and proxies play a key role in adapting the world to people with special needs. I don’t see why the mobile web should be an exception.

    To bring the line closer, the solution it’s to focus in making better and more powerfule devices, thay will surely include ways to allow people with disabilities to use them, like most modern Operating Systems do (Hey, it’s Windows implementing those special services, not every single programmer making a piece of software that runs on it).

    Back to your original post, I find suspicious the abundance of analogies with real-world situations, but I’m not seeing any _real_ examples of accesible mobile sites or leading cases to support your view. Even a “don’t” case could help us see your POV with less skepticism.

    If W3C thinks this is doable, the better way to enforce it is by means of “reference implementations”. Make EXAMPLES of mobile accesible sites.

    Let us ignorant mobile developers see the light, so we can implement voice recognition, alt tags and multi-size fonts on a clumsy B/W WML wap browser.

    BTW, let it be a “nice” site also, attractive and full of images, so the other 99% of the world can enjoy life a little also.
26. 

    Pablo Schaffner 20 February 2007 at 3:37 am #

    I think i understand much better your point now Paul Walsh.

    I just intended to say there are some things that already exist that aren’t really made for (but will continue to exist, and thus is very important to mantain compatibility) disabled people. For example, the mobile devices themself are not practical for their size and etc, for disabled people.

    I also agree with someone here who said it’s not possible to use meta tags to tell devices to use something special, because the formats that already exist and to which we must be compatibility to, don’t support anything outside their languages (it wouldn’t be backwards compatible).

    I believe your point Paul is that in some point the Web and the mobile will colapse, and in some sense the devices should be able to see Web pages as an accesible device for the same webpage, using (old devices) or not using a proxy (new devices). Is this the intent of your article or did i misunderstood it?

    So people should focus to design better webpages that support mobile devices instead of developing specifically wappages. I think this is what Luca doesn’t agree with (saying it in GAP in wurfl’s website). Should the W3C define the set of guidelines so that web developers make their websites mobile enabled?

    I think we are both saying good things, Luca, you and some people here (including me), but not communicating very well between us. I think Luca and the rest of us would be in the side of making better use of mobile devices focusing in adaptation of capabilities and etc, and developing the server proxies perhaps behind wap sites to help them access these special sites, and you are in the side of saying the W3C should define guidelines for the websites so that proxies know what to read. There isn’t really a conflict here, we both support the alternative you propose in some way, but we will have different opinions about it since our POV is very different because of our respective backgrounds (we are more like pure wap developers and you seem more like a web developer).

    I believe i and many others here did not understand your neutral point of view here, because the emotion you express in your article looks like an attack to Luca. Maybe the title you used wasn’t talking about Luca discriminating in business, but rather “discrimination isn’t good for business” as a title, and “luca is wrong” as your opinion. I just think it was a confusing/conflicting title.
27. 

    Sean Owen 20 February 2007 at 4:09 am #

    To, ah, maybe clarify some of my points in this surprisingly spirited discussion — I was comparing W3C efforts in mobile to efforts in accessibility, but was not trying to suggest we consider mobile accessibility. In that sense I totally agree with Alejandro. The mobile experience needs to be made usable to users, period, before one thinks about accessibility concerns. First things first.

    Also I was not particularly suggesting that WCAG and MWI / mobileOK have the same goals. If anything I was noting that WCAG and mobileOK are fundamentally different concerns, given that accessibility and mobile-friendliness are, respectively, driven by legal and business concerns. I suppose I meant to imply that accessibility concerns should think a little more about cost versus benefit — dare I say that WCAG should take notes from mobileOK’s practicality? Nay, I won’t say that since WCAG and accessibility are indeed motivated by something different.

    But, one theme I see emerging here which I do agree with is that intelligent authoring of markup helps in many areas. Such pages are friendlier to mobile devices (and transcoders), and also to screen readers and so on. I agree with the point against bloated, media-heavy junk on the web. I do agree that a well-authored page no doubt does better with search engines for indirect reasons. I think Luca would agree since he, like me, believes in solving the problem largely on the client side, while pushing for compatible, good authoring practices on the server side — rather than huge, expensive, heavy-handed solutions on every server in the world.
28. 

    Luca Passani 20 February 2007 at 8:00 am #

    I turn on my PC in the morning, and I notice that there’s been a hell of a party going on here in the night!

    Paul, I may have been wrong many times in my life, but apparently this is not one of them (at least if I judge from the feedback you got from readers).

    Of course, I am not advocating discriminating against people with disabilities. I was just making a point against having WCAG mud the water when it comes to telling people how to build good and usable mobile sites. When it comes to MWI PB, WCAG has not brought much benefit. In fact, I think I did much more for usability and caring for the need of all end-users with GAP (http://www.passani.it/gap/ ) than MWI ever cared for with BP. That’s the point I was trying to make. Just to be more specific, let me describe the BP “practices” that were forced in by the WCAG lobby:
    - do not use frames and pop-ups in mobile site. You’ll agree with me that it does not take a genius to figure that out. Many imode users in Japan also created CHTML sites they could show to their friends (previewing in MSIE) and, guess what, they were not trying to open windows and frames! all in all, a pretty pointless contribution.
    - do not use tables for layout: this is a BAD practice. tables are the only way to place picture and text side-by-side on a mobile browser in a way that works consistently across all mobile browsers (and no, CSS can’t do it at the moment, not on the same variety of devices at least). As a little aside, you can use table for layout and still validate 5 out of 5 with the dotMobi validator. Obviously, I am not the only one who thinks this WCAG contribution to BP is rubbish.
    - use colors with high-contrast: that’s also bad. You may choose colors with high contrast for your mobile site, pass W3C and segala validation/certifications with flying colors, only to find that some devices won’t honor the color for hyperlinks, thus leaving the user totally stranded in practice. Not very accessible.

    Luca Passani
29. 

    Paul Walsh 20 February 2007 at 8:26 am #

    Alejandro – I think you *might* be making assumptions about what I’m saying. I believe in delivering content in a way that is a contextual representation of the device used. This can only be achieved using best practices, methods suggested by Sean (which are best practices) and adaptation. That said, you only have to listen to Apple and Nokia (recently) – they believe they can deliver a great user experience for Web users on mobile devices. OK, this isn’t going to happen over night, but why are so many people looking back?! Take a look at the capability of the iPhone (full stop).

    Not every device will have great Web browsing capability, but it’s about consumer choice as some will have very good browsing capability soon. Opera mini offers a decent experience today.

    Again, I wasn’t talking specifically about accessibility on mobile devices with regard to the Web. Lord knows (as you point out), it’s difficult to get it right on the desktop.

    I don’t think your an ignorant mobile developer. I respect mobile developers just like any other developer. I do see a similar trend with mobile developers today like I did on the desktop in the mid 90′s. The difference is that so many more people want to make improvements today, there are more best practices (believe it or not) and technology is moving much quicker.

    Sigh, at last, someone with constructive points without hurling insults
30. 

    Paul Walsh 20 February 2007 at 8:36 am #

    Pablo – spot on! Thanks

    The difference of opinion between me and Luca is that I believe in ‘trying’ to deliver the Web experience on mobile devices. I *do* realise that this is almost impossible to achieve without adaptation amongst other things *today*.

    I believe that without WAP, the user experience would have been so poor that we’d never encourage users to use the Web. My company has vast experience in testing WAP gateways, devices, content and applications such as Active. So it’s not as if I’m a desktop Web person without mobile experience or appreciation – quite the opposite.

    I’m an evangelist for keeping *the* Web in line and to help ensure it doesn’t go off in different directions just because we have a limitation in a specific technology at one point in time. Mobiles are just smaller screens with restrictive input and cost issues. All of these things are improving all the time (a point I continue to highlight).

    I’ve got the future in mind whilst realising that we must retain a mobile specific contextual mix of applications and content. There will always be a use case for this. There will also be a use case for the Web when best practices *help* play a part, technology continues to advance, operators drop price points and consumers become more aware. Not to mention, when mobile networks are rolling out more across developing countries. T

    he W3C MWI is just 1 actor on stage – it’s not trying to resolve everything for everyone today. It’s a step in the right direction.
31. 

    Paul Walsh 20 February 2007 at 8:37 am #

    Sean – I agree with absolutely everything you say. I never meant to give the impression that I thought otherwise.

    I was not talking about accessibility for disabled users on mobile devices either.
32. 

    Paul Walsh 20 February 2007 at 8:48 am #

    Luca – I think most of the commentators on my post thus far are mobile specific developers/users. They’re in support of ‘you’ and your cause (which is great and is needed). So it’s not exactly a balanced view and I wouldn’t for a second, base my final opinion on it.

    Regarding the use of WCAG, as explained by the MWI group (me included), only relevant points were included and modified where necessary. It was a starting point only.

    Nothing was enforced by the WCAG lobby. In fact, the WCAG group wasn’t involved in the early days. Charles from Opera first put the list together and the group reviewed each point one by one. I just happen to be one of the knowledgeable people on WCAG who helped to review the early draft in great detail.

    Regarding your point about discrimination and for the record. I emailed Luca (before anyone posted a comment) to suggest that the title of my post was out of line and did not reflect the content. In fact, I wrote the title with one theme in mind and then changed it so my post was more generic to accessibility in general to get people thinking.

    Although, the comment made by Luca, did look to me, like he was saying disabled people deserve something different just because it’s a little more difficult, when using his generic analogies. I can see that he is not descriminating now (I think) but still believe that some additional effort is required by society – without being extreme which I never suggested.

    Luca’s response was

    it’s OK. You can keep me highlighted in the title
33. 

    Luca Passani 20 February 2007 at 9:09 am #

    > I think most of the commentators on my post thus far
    > are mobile specific developers/users.

    a group which happens to be underrepresented in the MWI BP, but which will make their voice heard as soon as you stick your head out of W3C, as you can see.

    Luca
34. 

    Tom Thurston 20 February 2007 at 9:41 am #

    Hi Paul,

    You are 100% correct about the lift in Baby Gap in Guildford High Street. In fact, we never took our double stroller out in Guildford because we couldn’t even get it in most front doors, let alone lifts! My wife and I think that Guildford is probably the most baby unfriendly place on the planet. I can remember my wife got back from town one day when she was 9 months pregnant and told me she was carrying our daughter in a pushchair up some stairs in House of Fraser and some horrible woman who was coming down the stairs made my wife stop half way up them, and go back down, because she wasn’t moving out of the way.

    Anyway, I see your point about Guildford, but it’s certainly not Luca’s fault, he’s probably never even been to Guildford, and if he ever goes there, he’ll probably moan about that stupid small lift in Baby Gap like the rest of us.

    On pushing the boundaries for the disabled on mobile devices:

    I tutored 2 blind girls through their Computer Science Msc whilst I was at uni. These girls both had screen readers which read out what was on the page (at about 3 million words a second), one was partially sighted and could see the difference between black and white if the objects were big enough. So for these girls to enjoy a mobile site, they’d have needed either some kind of brail le pad, or a screen reader. One of them might have got by if the screen was the same size as the empire states building with font size set to ‘double decker bus’.

    I don’t know much (anything) about voice xml, but if mobile devices do have the capability to read the screen out aloud via voice xml, or even just reading the normal text on the screen… then I’m sure that Luca, and the rest of the WURFL community would be behind adding this to the product. Are you willing to help out?

    With kind regards,

    Tom
35. 

    Paul Walsh 20 February 2007 at 10:02 am #

    Tom – I hear what you say about Guildford!

    Regarding accessibility for mobile users, it’s unfortunate, but expected I guess, that commentators are commenting before reading other comments. I didn’t mean to give the impression that the conversation was about disabled users on mobiles.

    Unfortunately Luca was the first to use analogies which prompted my response to write a post about accessibility.

    Yes, I’m willing to help in any way I can to make more content more accessible to more people on more devices. Naturally, there is a line to draw. Otherwise we’ll all go bust.

    Luca complained about the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines being used as a foundation for the MWI. That’s what triggered the debate. As I suggested to Luca, only the relevant WCAG stuff was used.
36. 

    Marten van Wezel 20 February 2007 at 10:14 am #

    Paul,

    There obviously is truth to your statement that the people posting here are people who are actively interested in web development for mobiles. But it saddens me that your conclusion ‘therefore’ is that you will not base your opinions on what ‘we’ say since it’s not a balanced view? What would be balanced? Are you suggesting that you should listen to the actual end user when he says he prefers the bouncing doohickey to the blinking thingy?

    While I’m all for user-oriented design, we are not talking about implementation ergonomics or intrinsic usability guidelines. We are talking about what tools you want the mobile developer to use to display the content he (or his company) wants to display. I would submit to you that the only ones that should be involved in this discussion are the mobile developers. Then, when we’ve established the technical toolset, we can let the designers and ergonomics and accessability experts swoop in and try to figure out how to lay out a page.

    Now, although Im a touch disappointed that you don’t seem to answer/address many of my points, I’ll answer your question with a counter-question (ha). Which is:

    If the W3C feels that the PC and the mobile world are converging, why are they so hell-bent on preventing the use of even the most basic functionality PC’s use? (like tables, css, and so on). Now I’m actually quite sure Apple would agree with me, since they often sacrifice ‘legacy’ users for prettying up things. Also I feel Apple is totally irrelevant in the current mobile world. They produce one phone. (not a bad one, and they might become relevant one day..) As for Nokia, are we speaking of the same nokia that has chosen to leverage their (relative)monopoly by building their own specific OS and specific extensions of midp that would make apps that used these extensions prettier and slicker on their devices while hardly functional on generic devices?

    Frankly, your choice of ‘backers’ seems to crumble under a little scrutiny. Not that it matters that much, as I said before, while I don’t consider ‘big corporations’ as intrinsically evil or anything, they can, and usually do have a wide variety of reasons for doing stuff their way, and ‘whats best for users’ is not always on the top of their list!

    While I am still contractually obliged to remain ‘mysterious’ I must note that I find your invoking the name ‘google’ repeatedly quite funny. But let us dispense with which big name might see things our way, and why our opinion should be understood as what top experts in the field would agree with – they are logical fallacies. Let us instead focus on the actual arguments.

    And now, why do ‘we, the developers’ get all riled up about the W3C? Well, you guys have one thing going for you, you’ve managed to get a lot of players in one room. If the W3C would in fact reccommend something, it will hold a certain pull. If they reccommend something archaic, it will take back part of the mobile world to its stone age (and I really really love the irony age) (sic). If on the other hand you reccommend something sensible, then the world could benefit. Until I have the impression that it is no use anymore, I will do my best to steer.
37. 

    Paul Walsh 20 February 2007 at 10:33 am #

    Marten –

    Are you suggesting that you should listen to the actual end user when he says he prefers the bouncing doohickey to the blinking thingy?

    No. I simply disagreed with Luca. Of course I listen to mobile developers (I have staff who are mobile developers!).

    The BP document specifies Best Practices for delivering Web content to mobile devices. The principal objective is to improve the user experience of the Web when accessed from such devices. It’s not about improving WAP sites.

    It is primarily directed at creators, maintainers and operators of Web sites. Readers of this document are expected to be familiar with the creation of Web sites, and to have a general familiarity with the technologies involved, such as Web servers and HTTP. Readers are not expected to have a background in mobile-specific technologies.

    Now we’re moving off on to the mobile web vs WAP debate…I’d rather keep that discussion on the relevant posts – http://segala.com/blog/web-on-the-move-anytime-anywhere/

    Regarding Apple and Nokia, I don’t disagree with your observations regarding legacy hardware and proprietary material. I used them to demonstrate that there is new technology approaching fast, that helps demonstrate my believe that the Web will be possible to browse on mobile devices in the near future – not all of it naturally.

    BTW, I don’t represent the W3C. I do however believe in standards. I also believe that they are the most relevant consortium for creating standards for the Web, irrespective of the technology used to access it. That is of course, as long as it engages with the relevant parties. I think it does. OMA are involved and you are more than capable of bringing your thoughts up when documents are reviewed publicly. Every comment is reviewed.

    I mentioned Google because it is a member of the MWI. Furthermore, it is co-editor of the conformance document called mobileOK.
38. 

    Sam Falaki 20 February 2007 at 10:47 am #

    My apologies for the knee-jerk reaction earlier, I didn’t follow this discussion from its very begininnings. Paul, with all due respect, being Chair of an “Association” is nothing to brag about, and if I were you I wouldn’t mention AOL in public :O (just teasing). Anyhow, I do understand your point, it’s nice to “try”, and set goals and dreams and so on, no objections. I was under the impression that this discussion was about setting a standard whereby all mobile sites would have to be accessible by blind people (something along those lines). If that were the case, I could argue as well that making mobile sites only accessible by the most advanced handsets (ie xhtml) only serves to further widen the digital divide in the world, where billions of people have cell phones but no access to the internet, because WAP is not good enough. I could argue that Paul Walsh discriminates against the poor people of the world, and is only looking out for the interests of wealthy British (including the blind ).

    Anyways, about standards, HTML was nice, but most are useless. They are usualy tilted towards the big vendors, particularly in telecomunications. To use an example, GPRS, was not needed, but in order to force operators to buy GPRS infrastructure, the standards bodies made it a requirement for MMS. All operators wanted MMS because SMS was such a big hit. Why was SMS a big hit? Certainly not because of vendors and particiants of standards bodies. The business started with teenagers figuring out how to bypass the operators in order to sell ringtones. A nokia phone connected to a PC would send out the SMS. An IVR (from the fixed line) was used for billing. THen, after the operators realized there was business potential, they opened up their networks with Premium SMS and short codes to get a slice of the billing. Today, “mobile content” is all the hype. My point, all these standards bodies are often useless. Look at Java, athough it’s not a “standard” it almost is, it has got to be the most horrible programming language. At first the idea was great, write once run anywhere, the reality today is that it’s the best language for rapid development, and 3rd rate programmer could produce some semi-working software in a short time, but forget about performance and stability. Speaking of HTML, why did it take forever to get away from POST and GET in webserver-webserver communications? Oh yes, I know there was J2EE, very popular with IT guys working in big corps, requires lots of training, big machines, expensive licenses. Webservices finaly comes out, years after the WEB has been hugely popular. I was amazed recently, that the most widely used communication method today is still POST and GET, which have its origins in submitting forms. But speaking of webservices, why XML? I thought ASN.1 was the way to go? XML is very bandwidth inefficient. What happened to CORBA and IIOP? Don’t we have too many standards? Do we really need more rules and regulations? If the market for blind people who use cell phones is on the order of 50 zillion dollars, then wouldn’t some smart programmers and entrepreneurs find a way to fill that niche without the need for inventing a standard? I think standards should refect reality, rather than trying to shape it. End-users and customers don’t care about standards. Personaly, I’m very happy with opensource contributions such as Wurfl and recently, Luca Pasani’s WALL. Particularly, WALL has made it possible to write code in one markup, that would be viewable in all types of phones. To me WALL is a major breakthrough. It allows all us little guys, to go out and give the people what they want, rather than what some bored guys in a boardroom decide that people want. WURFL and WALL can run on a 3$/month webhosting plan. Why hasn’t the W3C been able to come up with something like WALL? They should be ashamed of themselves.
39. 

    Paul Walsh 20 February 2007 at 11:01 am #

    It’s not about accessibility for disabled users with mobiles.

    You’re right, being Chair of a trade association isn’t something to brag about. I wasn’t. I was hoping to demonstrate that I appreciate the need for creativity and not just standards that in some people’s opinion, hamper creativity. BIMA is the trade association that represents the creative industry in digital.

    Regarding AOL, it’s definitely something to be proud of (I know you were teasing ). If it wasn’t for AOL, the Web wouldn’t have been adopted as well. So, think of AOL in the early days as WAP today. That is, only giving consumers content that’s usable until we have better standards, cheaper price points and education about what’s out there on the big bad Web – thanks for helping me get that in

    Speaking of your comment regarding wealthy British, the opposite is true. I firmly believe that there are more people who don’t access the Web than there are who do. People who live in developing countries are more likely to access the Web from mobile devices. Segala is in it for all the good moral reasons as well as to make money. We make no bones about that.

    I agree that standards bodies are useless – but I’m referring to the mobile industry where there are too few standards implemented, or it takes years and years for them to churn out a thought piece.

    Web based standards aren’t regulations. You can take the MWI or leave it.

    I also agree that Luca’s work is great. It will be needed for some time to come.
40. 

    Marten van Wezel 20 February 2007 at 12:59 pm #

    First of all, you initially thought that Luca treated disabled people as ‘second rate citizens’. I think that that worry has been fixed, the reasons for either including or excluding certain support for certain groups should hinge on pragmatic reasons.

    Voltaire and me quite efficiently defended the principle that a group like MWI should not try to legislate and regulate what disabilities should be accounted for (by forcing people that wish to comply with MWI to comply with needlessly limiting demands) Your argument that you can take MWI or leave it is quite a cop-out, of course we can take it or leave it, but there is no denying that W3C has pull in the industry, so inherently flawed reasoning on their part hurts us all. If a web developer wants to get hired at some company (yours? ), and he can loudly brag that all my sites have this neato ‘W3C MWI compliant ++” tag, then management types will be impressed. This is what I call ‘pull’ . Additionally, the ‘take it or leave it’ stance of yours could quite easily be interpreted as ‘yeah ok, MWI is fundamentally flawed and wrong, but I can’t be bothered to reconsider’.

    My point so far: the MWI ‘baseline reccommendation’ should not impose restrictions that are only there to enable disabled people to view the content better.

    Conversely, I think the MWI might make itself extra useful by making ‘lists’ of extra restrictions that should be applied to make the site optimally useful for disabled people. Call it the ‘MWI disabled additional reccommendation’ which can be used by people/businesses that consider the disabled their target group.

    If you disagree with me so far, then please, defend yourself, instead of skipping the argument entirely. If you don’t, then I think your original post is fundamentally flawed.

    The ‘mobile web’ vs ‘PC web converging to mobiles’ debate, well, I suppose we can strip that discussion out of here, but it is quite relevant. The relevancy is that REAL disabilities (please don’t hurt me.) will require tailored hardware. This tailored hardware will contain SOME form of translation anyway, if only to transform say text to braille.

    The question becomes:
    - Do we really want to go for the smalles common denominator, not allowing anything but the simpelest of HTML constructs and no more.
    -or-
    - Will we agree on certain ‘programming patterns’ and hope that the proxy software inside the tailored hardware will be able to make heads or tails of it. XHTML-MP lends itself perfectl y for this. Simply strip tags you recognise but consider dangerous () while displaying the contents, and ignore all unrecognised tags.

    I and I think Luca agrees, think the latter option is better. It is quite easy to leave stuff out, and Opera, with their opera-mini browser proxy have been quite adept at even parsing and reformatting complex PC webpages.
41. 

    Paul Littlebury 20 February 2007 at 2:18 pm #

    It amazes me how a simple and effectives set of web design guidelines have illicited such over-the-top responses. Sifting through the “knee-jerk developer-centric responses, the resistance is based on extreme views on what web accessibility means for development. There is far too much development detail, when it should remain a broad topic. The web audience is one of the most important requirements consideration when designing websites – any methodology will highlight that.

    When someone dissolves into tech-speak, my tester mind says they are hiding something, creating obstacles where there are none. It is dangerous to rely on browsers and plugins solely for accessibility, and sorting out messy code on-the-fly – how do you think IE became so popular, and is now creating multiple headaches with its clunky dependencies? Whatever a website is accessed through, mobile or PC, it should display with competency.

    No-one is suggesting that the standards people somehow will create a revolution with their guidelines, or somehow fix problems inherent in some industries. I welcome any effort to clear the web of the clutter of “noo-mediuh” heavy sites that have been clogging up the pipes the last few years. And the mistaken illusions as to what users want, when the time to find out what they really want, is not being addressed.

    I do not believe in enforcement – it should be a voluntary acceptance. The way to contribute is to attempt to address the W3C requirements, and see what can be done. Who knows, maybe it will improve the web experience ……. it certainly need it.
42. 

    Sean Owen 20 February 2007 at 3:19 pm #

    A few replies to knowledgeable Mr. Passani, who, to the MWI’s chagrin, spends a great deal of time commenting on MWI and no time participating constructively. The animosity is strange since the Best Practices document inspired his own quite similar GAP document. I think there is actually a lot of agreement too, but, again, you do have to read the MWI docs.

    - do not use frames and pop-ups in mobile site. You’ll agree with me that it does not take a genius to figure that out.

    Agreed. A lot of those best practices like “get your encoding right” seem like no-brainers. I imagine one can still find at least one site for each BP which gets it wrong. So, I think this item is still fair to include.

    - do not use tables for layout: this is a BAD practice. tables are the only way to place picture and text side-by-side on a mobile browser in a way that works consistently across all mobile browsers

    I do think this one is controversial. Given that the BPs are aimed at devices whose screen is 120 pixels wide, I think it’s hard to meaningfully put anything next to anything else, tables or no.

    The intent of the BPs, which is perhaps more clear in mobileOK, is to talk about what one should do for a limited “default delivery context” device, not what one should do for all mobile devices. So we might agree that side-by-side layout itself, and thus tables, are inappropriate for such a small screen while agreeing that they’d be fine on a larger screen.

    - use colors with high-contrast: that’s also bad. You may choose colors with high contrast for your mobile site, pass W3C and segala validation/certifications with flying colors, only to find that some devices won’t honor the color for hyperlinks, thus leaving the user totally stranded in practice. Not very accessible.

    So I think you agree with the best practice, but, are concerned that devices won’t work as you intended. Good, we agree there. The BPs and mobileOK assume working CSS 1 support, which includes text color. There’s no way to know whether a browser bug won’t mess up your page, yes, but, that argument can be taken to any extreme you like.
43. 

    Luca Passani 20 February 2007 at 3:46 pm #

    Sean,

    > There’s no way to know whether a browser bug
    > won’t mess up your page, yes, but, that
    > argument can be taken to any extreme you like.

    it’s not exactly like this. GAP places XHTML devices with serious bugs (say SonyEricsson T68i) outside of the baseline. The rest it supports (and if it doesn’t, it is a bug in GAP).
    BP dreams of being forward looking and dismisses devices within its baseline which don’t support this or that feature as buggy (another way to look at it is that BP has a way more selective baseline than GAP, i.e. it supports less devices).
    Honestly, I think developers who need an easy path to mobile development are better served by the GAP approach, because in real projects they need to make their applications work on all devices and not only on the ones someone else happens to consider buggy.

    As far as not contributing much to BP lately, this is true. As you know, I think that the one-web dogma is an insormountable obstacle to doing anything reasonable within W3C (among other obstacles of course). Nevertheless, I think I have contributed to improving BP too by keeping it under scrutiny all of this time. It would be sad for me to hear that you disagree with this.

    Luca
44. Mobile Web or Mobile Internet (WAP)?

    [...] Triggered by a discussion on a W3C Mobile Web Initiative (MWI) email thread, I wrote a post yesterday which sparked huge debate (43 comments and counting). [...]
45. 

    Chaals 21 February 2007 at 2:53 pm #

    Wow! Lots of noise here (although not many people for a party…)

    It seems that a lot of the commentary here is based on a lack of any idea how people with disabilities actually use the Web. (On phones, the answers are varied but the same sorts of technologies exist as on desktops – screen readers, specialised browsers, proxy services running voice systems, …)

    It seems that Luca has also failed to get the point of MWI’s collection of documents. The Best Practices do indeed anticipate a better world with better mobiles – although they also provide for catering where reasonable to the broken systems that are out there today and will stay for some time. But along with this “what to do for an ideal world where either everything works well, or you have adapted to those things that don’t”, is the mobileOK work that is more directly oriented towards the things that are feasible and practical and useful right now.

    GAP is nice. It’s Luca’s idea of what matters to the web, and since Luca is an intelligent chap it is well worth a read. It’s predicated on the idea that you have to write a seperate web for mobile users, and as Marten notes, at Opera we make the normal web work on mobiles. Funnily enough, we also think that the idea of a seperate web for mobiles is a load of rubbish.

    The work to produce MWI Best practices, and the ongoing work of producing MobileOK (in which Sean has played a crucial rôle), is an exercise where a lot of people try to put their heads together and come up with something useful.

    This leads, on the one hand, to “design by committee”. While that approach allegedly produces camels when making racehorses (never mind that Australia exports racing camels as well as horses), it also produces things like peace treaties and interoperable phone networks. (Yes, big players and small players too are always looking for an advantage. But at least you can send SMS in the GSM networks of the world).

    If it is done right, it also leads to something that a lot of major players are prepared to stand behind. If it is reasonably good per se, then having a broad base of support is helpful. It means that developers of things that don’t work well (the t68i default browser, browsers that can’t follow basic CSS as far as link colours, and so on) have a target to work towards, because content developers will be moving towards content that looks like that.

    And it means that there is a way to make a basic site that pretty much works, for desktop or mobile. Nobody is forced to do that, as Sean notes – it is just that there seem to be good business reasons for wanting to do so. There is no doubt that some people who want to make a special different mobile website without trying to make it even vaguely usable *except* on a mobile can invest masses of time or money in building such a system. There are companies that do so. There are also companies like Opera who rely on making even badly-designed web content work. But we are involved in this work because there are, and will continue to be second-rate browsers out there.

    MWI chose some baselines. Luca chose some baselines. I hope MWI will work on expanding the set of baselines, so you have simple ways of developing for the variety of the web – both at a higher level than their set, and at a lower level for old stuff that is deployed and can’t be changed (although at Opera we are working hard on changing that “fact”, too). Any attempt to create something useful on a wide scale (and there is almost nothing that works on a scale as wide as the Web) means making some compromises. The trick is really in picking good ones.

    Finally, MWI does not insist on making things accessible to people with disabilities. As Paul noted in his original post, it merely took a set of guidelines that were dealing with similar problems (small effective screen sizes, limited input/output, and so on) and took advantage of those which we also relevant to the mobile world. Because, as noted, those guidelines are already well-known since web developers in the real world do look at accessibility, and have seen these things before.

    In the countries where the law insists on some reasonable steps being taken to minimise discrimination, WCAG is generally offered as the most prominent guidance. But it is fair to say that countries are responsible for deciding what they legislate – homosexuality, sex with minors, copyright, theft, discrimination, assault, fraud, and so on are all treated differently by different legal systems. You aren’t required to like the system where you live, just to abide by it, change it, or move. And in Code-law countries like Italy and France, the myth that they have a certainty lacking in comon-law countries which simply refer to “reasonable” is easily exploded by looking at the practice – I refer you to a law school if you want to follow that up. In other words, Marten, your argument borrowed from Voltaire clearly doesn’t hold water when compared to actual law in use today, whether in common-law countries like the US, UK and Australia, or code-law countries like most of continental Europe. People will of course disagree on particular details, but it would take someone like the fool of a court-appointed lawyer I had to argue that code law provides certainty rather than relying on the interpretation of terms such as “reasonable” that characterises common law (especially while arguing the interpretation of a particular part of code law. Even the prosecuting policeman was prepared to point out that he was talking rubbish).
46. 

    Luca Passani 21 February 2007 at 4:21 pm #

    > ..since Luca is an intelligent chap…

    thanks Chaals. I love you too.

    > at Opera we make the normal web work on mobiles.

    sure, but for your minibrowser, you may want to decide once and for all whether the body width should be the actual device screen (recommended) *OR* those 600 pixels found in desktop web browsers.

    For good measure, I’ll keep advising the world to serve Opera LCD (simple) mark up until you do.

    Luca
47. 

    Sorcha Moore 21 February 2007 at 5:44 pm #

    Some of the comments above display a worrying misunderstanding of the WCAG guidelines, in terms of motivation and implication. To any web developer interested in best practice, the majority of the WCAG guidelines will already be present on any project they undertake, for example using CSS, designing for device-independence, providing clear navigation mechanisms. Some will require a significant additional effort, for example suggested color contrast ratios, the provision of a linear text alternative for all tables that lay out text in parallel, word-wrapped columns. My point is that the majority will not cause undue burden to any developer with an interest in creating quality web products.
    The motivation for the WCAG is irrelevant. WCAG is not about rules and regulations, “DEMAND” doesn’t come into the picture and they do not force people into “unreasonable restrictions”. The guidelines are just that, guidelines – take them or leave them – that is, take or leave your customers’ and viewers’ requirements. When using the WCAG, you are not required to make a conformance claim – it’s not about proving anything. The WCAG or the WCAG working group does not force the guidelines on anyone. Your users and your customers do that, and in some countries, government policy makers also provide this motivation.

    There’s really no point in commenting on phrases such as “the other 99% of the world” and “those few people”. Although, I did find it quite comical that someone who might call themselves a web professional would say “the mobile devices themself are not practical for their size and etc, for disabled people.”
48. 

    Marten van Wezel 22 February 2007 at 1:03 am #

    Okay, let’s see, where did I leave off

    Paul Littlebury> I’m not quite sure if you thought of me when you made your remark about tech details that make you suspicious, however as knee-jerk reactions go… seriously though, I can only speak from my own experience with developing mobile platforms that the best way to handle things like ‘baseline standards’ has to be to let the techies make a certain (hopefully human-readable) list of possible technologies, and then let the designers/ergonomics people see what they would need, perhaps suggest things they really would like, and so on. Obviously this process shouldn’t be too ‘ping-pong’ – in the best situation both sides know a bit about the other’s domains and just sit together.

    The whole thing I am trying to underscore is that we can’t go to a maker of a braille device, and ask him how he would like to see a webpage, and take that as a standard. Of course we should listen to him to get the point of view. The problem is that a document with no formatting whatsoever would be perfect for braillereaders, but quite ugly for everybody else. Instead, we should be focussing an creating filter-able content, and proper filters. The other option (creating LCD content) will leave many users wondering why they bought this k-rad 320×240 touchscreen phone that only displays some text and a 1cm x 1cm image.

    Sean> About the tables: certainly they should not be overused, but Id love to see you display a price list with prices to the right of the description in a human-readable way. More than 3 columns seems unlikely to work on the LCD’s, so I think that should be reccommended as ‘BP’.

    Chaals> Of course the idea that (say) CNN.com should basically have a ‘mobile’ team that creates the mobile site, writes news stories completely independently of the ‘big’ site is a bad one. (maybe this is actually true currently, sometimes the world doesn’t work like you think it should). If this is what the MWI wants to fix with the ‘one web’ idea, then sure, I’m behind you.

    But as I mentioned above, I think the actual debate isn’t about ‘one web’ vs. ‘two webs’ in the above sense of the word. What the debate IS about, is where to strike the content adaptation balance. Should content be simpler than HTML 1.0, and work on every device, and look like on every device, or should the content only work on that prototype apple iphone 2.0 and break on every other phone, or.. somewhere inbetween.

    Now somewhere the whole disabled people discussion snuck in here as well, but frankly I find it mostly irrelevant. As I mentioned before, producing mobile-friendly content almost per definition also produces ‘disabled-friendly’ content. Braille devices are so rare, that any creator of such devices will instantly realise that he probably can’t dictate standards. Instead he will have to try to follow them. If they do, then a properly built mobile-friendly environment will hand it the data it needs to support the blind user.

    I stand by my invocation of Voltaire, The fact that certain governments choose to follow some agenda is an inconvenience as best, and politically correct stupidity at worst, it does not detract from the validity of my point, it just means that being right doesn’t always imply a get out o jail free card.

    But in my mind, the realy interesting discussion is about content design, content classification and content adaptation. Just agree on some way to assign values to how important certain screen elements are, and a renderer can make appropriate choices to filter this content down to whatever the specific output hardware can handle. Of course, advertising will open a whole new can of words here, but let’s leave that aside.

    One thing I do disagree with is that following some baseline is good enough to make your site ‘perfect’. No. It will make a site that probably works, but that no designer would be proud of. It is the easy way out. This is not Best Practice, this is Easy Way Out. It has its merits, don’t get me wrong, but Best Practice is a misnomer. Instead, I would expect efforts to be underway to try to aggregate databases for devices to find out what a specific device can and can’t do, and pair that with some ‘web templating system ‘ that allows a user to easily build a website that indeed works OPTIMALLY on all devices without having to personally know each and every device.

    And guess what. Check out WURFL and WALL – they seem to be at least a step in the right direction.

    We could perhaps use BP guidelines for creating a system that sends the right (amount of data) for a device of a certain scale classification. If a device can legigibly display an X amount of text in a page design of complexity Y, hand him Z amount of ‘fluff’ to pretty up the page and show him links he might want to click he he feels bored. If the device is a braille reader, hand him the headlines.
49. 

    Marten van Wezel 22 February 2007 at 1:37 am #

    Sorcha, you have some valid points, and I don’t know if I should feel personally attacked by them. But you are talking to me, please keep in mind the chronology of the discussion:

    1/ My beef with the original post was the idea that disabled people are ‘more specialer’ than other people who might have trouble using a mobile site. (hence my Voltaire thing).
    2/ I never started about MWI, Paul did, citing them as stakeholders and people who ‘backed him’ about the disabled stance. I replied by saying these were needlessly limiting demands. I stand by that (see above). I wasnt (at that time anyway) discussing MWI stuff like ‘usage of multi-column tables’ or baseline standards.
    3/ Then Paul discussed building sites with simple tools, and being happy with that design.
    4/ I countered that one with my question about why MWI tries to put very strong limits on acceptable constructs. I indeed do find even the MWI’s baseline too constricting. 4 years ago, I would’ve agreed with it. Not so much now. Point me at someone who still uses a WAP 1.0 device and I’ll point you at someone who would never seriously use mobile internet anyway. But this deviated a bit from the original discussion, as Paul mentioned.
    5/ I also remarked that while MWI/W3C does not demand anything, and seem to have their heart in the right place, I noted that they do have considerable pull in the mobile world, and for that reason I would prefer to influence them by trying to bring up hopefully valid points. Their standards will influence my work, wether I like it, or not. If I can actually influence them by nudging them in my own direction, then all the better.

    Plus I like a good debate, now and then.

    Avast!
50. 

    Chaals 22 February 2007 at 8:56 am #

    Marten, I think you have missed some stuff. You probably read too much of Luca’s commentary…

    (On the disability aside: You seem not to know how actual braille devices work in practice. They take Web Content, with images and structure and all. Unformatted text is much harder to deal with for a braille system).

    The idea of MWI as a whole is to help make the web work everywhere. WURFL/WALL and their ilk are essentially the process being worked on with the Device Description group. As a comany that uses them (in Opera mini) I can assure you that while they are great, and the best open source stuff there is, they are not sufficient for all adaptation. (This is also why companies like Volantis, Drutt, and MobileAware make money…). This is the approach I expect from a content developer with the resources of CNN, the BBC, and similar sites that I actually use.

    The idea behind the Best Practices is that for people like me, who make simple straightforward sites (a large proportion of the web) and even potentially for people like Google (who also make a pretty straightforward site) it is possible to make something that works reasonably well anywhere.

    Naturally, the technology changes. The point of the baseline is that it provides something for developers who don’t meet it to aim for (Luca’s example of horribly broken browsers), and provides a target that many people will build content for (itself providing a push to developers who are behind).

    The Best Practices explicitly says to take advantage of more powerful systems as appropriate. (Which means don’t add flash just to send some to any system that handles it, but also don’t be afraid to make SVG available to the many phones that can deal with it, just don’t assume that they all can).

    Many of the things there are obvious, but many or most people still don’t do them, so it seems they are worth repeating. Others may not seem obvious, but in general have had a lot of thought and discussion behind them, and I think they are basically good ideas. (I can’t vouch for all the wording, but I think Jo Rabin did a good job of taking the various views and understandings and writing them into something that people will understand in roughly the same way – if they get around to reading it…)

    MobileOK Basic, the very simple stuff that can be machine tested, is a start at something that people should be able to implement. It assumes that you may do masses of adaptation for anything but a device that is unknown and presumed to meet a base set of capabilities. And describes what you should give out *in that case*. If you do no further adaptation, your content will work on other places, but not look very exciting. (That’s mostly fine by me. Usually the content I write is about as exciting as this comment. I doubt CNN wil restrict themselves to that…).

    And as it is in last call still, you could make comments on it and ths influence the spec… one of the benefits of W3C’s consensus-building approach

    On the other hand, you better hurry. Comments are due by 6 March. (See http://www.w3.org/TR/mobileOK-basic10-tests/ for details)

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