UN international accessibility review
They did that (closing) sharpish didn't they. 
};-) http://www.xhtmlcoder.com/
WVYFC chose the Yorkshire Air Ambulance as the main charity to fund raise for in 2006
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Obviously not from Yorkshire Mike Abbott
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I expect this sort of things crops up in other fields as well. For example, when researching city planning conventions for designing computer game levels, which is part of my hobby. I found the same sort of fuzzyness on some city planning issues that you get on Accessify Forums and dev blogs over accessibility and markup usage issues.
For example, here are three common conventions in urban road planning:
- T-junctions should have a street lamp opposite the minor road. This lights up any right-turning traffic on the major road and makes the kerbs easier to see on the curves into the minor road.
- Street lamps should alternate between sides along the length of the road so both directions are illuminated as equally as possible.
- Street lights are supposed to be about 30 metres apart.
So what's the best way to solve this? On their mailing lists and in reference books, opinion differs:
- Squeeze the lamp posts a bit closer together to ensure everything is well lit, with a light always opposite each junction.
- Space them apart a little to ensure a streetlight opposite each junction, even though the roads between junctions will be slightly less well-lit.
- Have two streetlights on the same side of the road at the normal distance and hope drivers can still see pedestrians crossing from the unlit side. (Happens a lot in the area I live, especially when junctions are too close to make up for shortfalls or overshoots in the default spacing.)
- Adjust the road layouts so things tie up better. (Sometimes happens when entirely new estates are being designed.)
- Allow the street light on the major road to be a little offset from the minor road, but place another street light near the end of the minor road. This ensures the main road keeps regular spacing and alternating. (However, it sometimes means a minor road ends up with two street lights on the same side at once end, which is a whole other issue!)
For example, adjusting the spacing of lights. This means balancing the cost of building, powering and maintaining extra street lights (squeezed-up) versus the potentially larger risk of accidents involving unseen pedestrians or cyclists due to lesser streeet illumination (spaced-out).
They have to choose which guidelines should trump the others. It's rare that a road has perfect spacing and alternating for it's whole length. The safety agencies have to decide whether a road can be called "safe" even if it does not pass all these guidelines to the letter -- analogous to calling a website "accessible" in the context of WCAG 1.0. The commissioner of the project has to weigh all this up to decide if the plan can go ahead with the budget they were given, just like with websites.
Becasue of this little window I've had into another world, I think the discussion about WCAG guidelines and how to use them is similar to that in many other professions. A degree of experience and expertise has to be employed (i.e. human judgement) to balance out the various factors in each circumstance.
Web accessibility is just one of many things in life which are too complicated for everything to be black and white. But you can still make rational decisions and summarise them to people who don't want to know about the nitty gritty. And you can discuss the judgements you've made in more detail with people who are interested, like we do here. Ultimately it depends on what works for the users, whether they be drivers or surfers.
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| AlunD wrote: | ||||
Article has now closed for feedback  |
With none published! I for one sent some.
--
Andy Mabbett
@pigsonthewing
Birmingham, England
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| pigsonthewing wrote: |
| With none published! I for one sent some. |
So did I.
If it can go wrong it will. So don't worry about it.
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