Re: online accessibility

Rick Miles wrote:
> Leon Blakeley is a darn nice person I don't care what anybody says!
> <snip>
> 
>>How many ISP's won't talk to you if you're not operating in a windows
>>environment? That must be in the same category!
> 
> From a business standpoint it's easy to give a few hours seminar and a bunch 
> of laminated do this/do thats to call center staff if you have only two or 
> three versions of windows to deal with but you'd be opening a can of worms 
> and need to pay a bit more to get someone who Understands and can ask 
> questions like have you checked your permissions for /dev modem?, what 
> does /dev/modem point to, are you using script the ppp-on script or kppp to 
> dial up? etc. etc.
> 
> Yes it marginalises some people to not provide technical support for windows 
> or maybe even mac users, but how many retirees and folk not so well off may 
> not have enough money to buy a PC with enough grunt for XP/IE-6.0 (and you 
> can't go out and buy 95 or 98 for that old 64 Mb P3.
> 
> Yet businesses like the Commonwealth who are encouraging people to use online 
> services are paying people who should know better but are putting together 
> websites that are "certified to operate with Microsoft Internet Explorer 
> only" That's lame as far as I'm concerned. 
> 
> How difficult is it to also check and see if something is WC3 compliant and 
> can run in other browsers.
> 
> It'd make me look twice at any business (or bank) that declares that their 
> website will run on any browser and any system and I've been considering 
> moving away from Commonwealth for some other reasons anyway.

Complain to the telecommunications or competition ombudsman, and maybe
they'll make a recommendation about universally standards compliant
commonwealth/government web sites;)