apartheid and Frames

[Douglas Alan <nessus@mit.edu>]

Chris Williams <chrisw@miso.wwa.com> wrote:

> I am on the side of right, and am fighting against hatred and bigotry.

> Why should I stop?

So, let me see if I have your argument straight: Mr. Burkhard Siedhoff
has made a nice Kate Bush oriented Web site.  Unfortunately,
Burkhard's Web site requires a Frames and JavaScript enabled browser.
Even though such browsers are available from several different
vendors, and a number of these browsers are completely free, Burkhard
is as evil as a KKK member pushing for apartheid.  The reason Burkhard
is as evil as a KKK member is because he clearly hates the blind and
anyone with old computers not capable of running modern Web browsers.
Even though we know nothing else about this man, we can deduce that he
is a hateful bigot because of the cold callousness toward the
technically challenged, which is demonstrated by his refusal to put in
an apparently minimal amount of work to make his site backward
compatible with older Web browsers.  This callousness shows him for the
hateful bigot he is.  We are so sure that of the awful hate that
swells up in side this man, that we will gladly risk offending and
alienating black people by comparing Burkhard's Kate Bush Web site to
a system of oppression whose sole purpose was to crush the spirit of
an entire race of human beings.

Do I have your argument straight Chris?  If not, please tell me where
I am mistaken.

As I have said before, I find this line of reasoning to be absurd and
quite offensive.  First of all, you neglect to take into account
potential motives other than hate and bigotry that might explain
Burkhard's decision.  On the other hand, having separate water
fountains for blacks and whites was clearly motivated by hate.  There
was no other explanation for it.  Every black person who was subject
to apartheid knew they lived in a society where the people in power
hated them, their children, and all their generations to come.  They
knew that every step they took to better themselves would be rewarded
by a jackboot to the head by someone who despised them.  Every day was
one filled by either fear or submission.  The separate water fountain
was just one of many tentacles of a system designed to crush the
spirit out of their entire race.

On the other hand there are many possible motives for Burkhard's
decision:

  - I don't know how to make it work better.
  - I don't have the time to make it work better.
  - I don't want to enable the page for any Web browser that I can't
    test out myself.  After all, my name is on this site and I want to
    make sure it looks good.
  - I have an artistic vision, and what I have done satisfies this
    vision.  Any compromise would destroy my vision and make me unhappy.
  - I don't do HTML directly, I use an HTML editor, and this is what
    the editor did. Sorry.
  - I don't have easy access to the Web site myself.  I designed it
    off the Web and gave the files to a friend to put in place for me.
    Any change no matter how small takes a great deal of effort for me
    to transfer the files to the right place.
  - My wife will kill me if I don't get home by 6pm sharp.  Sorry,
    can't help you.
  - Sure I can fix the Frames, but what about the JavaScript.  The
    JavaScript is also important to me.
  - Well, I might have fixed it, but you strike me as an ass, so
    forget it.  
  - I feel that Microsoft is a huge threat to the Internet, and I'm
    willing to sacrifice some of my audience to give a boost to the
    competition.
  - The Web is no longer a text delivery mechanism, it is quickly
    becoming a distributed, multimedia, just-in-time Java oriented
    operating system, and I have no intention of looking back.  If I
    add Lynx compatibility today, I'll just have to break it tomorrow
    when I add Java programs, RealAudio music, dancing text, animated
    icons, videos, VRML worlds, etc.
  - I feel for the poor and the blind, but I feel the solution for the
    poor is government supplied Java computers to the needy.  The
    solution for the blind is a Web page translating software that
    will ferret out any text on a site and display it.  In fact I give
    a lot of money to charities that work toward these goals.

I don't know which of these explanations is the correctly one--if any
of them is--and perhaps you and I don't agree with some or all of
these motives, but as you can see, none of them involves hate,
bigotry, or an organized political system designed to crush an entire
race.

> You're still refusing to see how much impact this has. I'll give you
> another example, OK? Until frames, at least some part of every web page
> could be read by the blind using speaking browsers.

Well, until the Web, there was Gopher.  It was text-only and therefore
put the blind and the seeing on equal footing.  The Web ruined all
this by adding pictures.  Why not rant against the Web then?  You fail
to realize that it is precisely the visual appeal of the Web that made
it so popular, and it's not going to get any less visual.  The Web is
going to increasingly become more visually oriented, with more
interactivity.  None of this will be particularly suited to the blind
and there is nothing you are going to be able to do about it with your
whining and offensive analogies.  As every day passes by, the Web will
become less of a text delivery mechanism and more of distributed
operating system running just-in-time Java applications.

Should we let the blind stand in front of the bulldozers of the
Internet revolution?  Perhaps this would yield a better world, but (1)
I tend to doubt that it would.  Design is an art form; it is a form of
human expression, and it shouldn't be squashed out of concern for a
small, handicapped minority of the population.  (2) It's just not
going to happen.

If you want to make a difference, you should provide tools to help the
handicapped navigate in a world designed for the fully able.  You
can't cut off everyone's legs and poke out their eyes in the name of
equality.

Just for yucks, I went to Burkhard's Web page using Mosaic and saw the
front door note saying that I couldn't access it with Mosaic.  I
didn't let this deter me.  I asked Mosaic to show me the HTML source
code, and after looking at the source code for a moment, I went to the
URL's indicated in the HTML source.  I did this knowing nothing about
HTML.  I was able to get to all of the material on the Web site using
this technique, although some of the pages had ugly JavaScript code in
them that Mosaic doesn't know how to present in a pretty manner.

You want to make a difference, Chris?  Teach the blind to use this
technique.  Better yet, since the source code is available to lynx and
Mosaic, why don't you modify them into a tool for the blind?  A tool
that will automate my manual technique.  Even better yet, set up a Web
site for the blind that will allow other Web sites to be specified and
will provide a blind-friendly interface to them.  Or just go to the
library and read some books onto tape, for crying out loud.

There are many constructive things you can do, Chris.  Accusing some
poor schmuck of being a Nazi because his Web site doesn't meet your
standard of compatibility is not constructive.  Nor is trivializing
the systematic oppression of a race of people.

|>oug