Abstract
In principle the World-Wide Web (or simply 'the Web') should afford access to blind people; the pages are composed in HTML which makes the structure of the document explicit. Browsers can be built which exploit that structure and render the information in a suitable non-visual format. However, in practice, this is not what has happened. There are a number of reasons for this which can loosely be characterized as `visual dominance'. In other words individual documents are designed in such a way as to enhance their visual presentation (while exacerbating non-visual accessibility) and HTML extensions are being developed which assume a visual presentation. This paper will discuss these trends, why they are occurring and whether there are ways of finding compromise between the (apparently) conflicting requirements of visual and non-visual presentation.
| Original language | English |
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| Title of host publication | Proceedings of the 6th International World Wide Web Conference (WWW6 Web Access'97) |
| Publication status | Published - 1997 |