> >> and let them go it alone from there.  This kind of technology is in place
> >> at
> >> http://www.connectability.ca/connectability/pages/sitetour/index.html, a
> >> Community Living agency out of Toronto, Ontario helping people with an
> >> intellectual disability.
> > I had a look at that site, frankly, I left before it even had time to
> > load. I'm only on a dial-up conection and did not want to waste time
> > waiting for some stupid looking Flash driven web movie to load!!.
> > If you really want to help anyone with a disability, then you should
> > just stick with plain old HTML, after all that is what it was created
> > for, to make documents accessable to anyone who required them.
> I agree that it takes some time for flash sites to load (something I hope
> Ma' Bell fixes in the future by providing affordable high speed internet to
> more constituents in urban and rural areas), I just think that HTML in
> itself can be very limiting in some ways.  You're using screen readers and
> other things to adapt to HTML (which I admit will overall expand your web
> experience allowing you wider web accessiblilty at this point) but I'm
> saying you could be in for a very different experience by instead having a
> site or two that adapt to you.  I'm disappointed that you were also willing
> to judge the site I mentioned before actually seeing it.  If you saw what it
> did and it was still not to your liking, I would consider it a fair
> assessment.

> >> You could consider Dragon Naturally Speaking to help with the physical
> >> disabilities.  Although I've not tested it using Internet Explorer, I
> >> believe it could be customized to access the internet without needing to
> >> touch a keyboard.  Profiles are set up for the voice recognition of each
> >> user and you teach it as you go.  This wouldn't work however with many of
> >> the technologies mentioned below because this is a software solution.
> >> (Although some devices are becoming more appropriately voice activated
> >> such
> >> as some of the newer cell phones able to call mom by saying "mom".)

> >> Another thing is that Web Designers don't usually make full use of tools
> >> such as XHTML.  New language standards are emerging in web design that
> >> will
> >> allow devices like Cell Phones or other tools to connect to and
> >> read/interact with the internet.
> > I think your getting a bit a head of yourself here!.
> > While I think XHTML has some great pertencial,  it will not be very
> > functional in it's true form for a year or two yet.
> > The main reason why is because IE6 does not support XHTML yet, served
> > with it's proper mime type which is XML, (I think).
> > So all current documents still need to be served eather as
> > HTML4.01Strict, or as XHTML1.0Strict, served up to IE as HTML.
> > So that is why not many people use it.
> > Also, it's not really known as too how much of XHTML will be supported
> > in IE7.
> I didn't say the technology was here, but that it wasn't far off.  XML is
> being taught in Universities today.  XHTML will no doubt be with us in the
> next couple of years as you mentioned.  But IE and personal computers won't
> necessarily be the only browswer technology out there just as it isn't now.
> XML has the capacity to reinvent HTML so that almost any device with an
> internet connection could connect to and read parts of a website that only
> applied to it.  (For instance a cell phone could be programmed to view
> content only tagged as <phone> in the XHTML).

> >> this case, the improvement for disabled users comes from the union of the
> >> website developer's code and the products that connect to it which so far
> >> isn't happening widescale.  What we're left with are devices such as cell
> >> phones that try their best to interpret older websites but are really
> >> just
> >> scratching the surface.  You can thank the flood of websites designed by
> >> Microsoft Frontpage and Macromedia Dreamweaver that make things simple
> >> for
> >> average joe designers, but limit applications such as this.
> > That is a load of rubbish.
> > DW in recent versions has had very good support for XHTML, while FP has
> > never supported anything, a part from a few MS specific tags.
> > It's due to the reasons staited above  as to why XHTML has not been and
> > is not very well supported, by many "Professional Web Designers".
> I am suggesting however that easily 30-40% of websites out there are NOT
> designed by professionals and that Frontpage and Dreamweaver (and lets not
> forget Netscapes little WYSIWYG editor) in their various incarnations over
> the years have allowed sites to be created outside the Web Accessability
> Guidlines let alone to include XHTML for disabilities.  I'm talking about
> the high school students making a web page for their father's small business
> or using a personal web space for a blog.  XML support would be a great
> advantage to web accessibility and we're only beginning to see the
> potential.

> While I do understand your points Chad, I don't appreciate having my input
> noted as "a load of rubbish" and continue to offer the same level of respect
> to everyone.

>     Aaron.