Re: Deaf Matters

[Rex Brooks <rexb@starbourne.com>]

Hi all,

What HumanML could do, and probably will do, is provide means to make 
it clear when someone with accessibility concerns or requirements is 
involved in an interaction, be it an online job application or 
shopping or doing remote work online at an employer's multi-purpose 
portal. Within that context, making emotive emphasis a recognizably 
non-trivialized component of communication is important, perhaps more 
so for an impaired individual, perhaps not, but it needs to be 
understood, not misunderstood or pooh-poohed.

As anyone who knows the consequences of the Americans with 
Disabilities Act can tell you, there are ramifications well beyond 
the specifics of accommodations for impaired persons, such as the 
fact that employers are a lot less inclined toward relying on "old 
boy" networks now than in the recent past... This points up how 
practicality is involved in our work here.

Ciao,
Rex

At 6:12 PM +0100 8/22/01, s.livingstone@btinternet.com wrote:
>Hi Darren.
>I think this is a very good point to bring up, and even further for 
>the accessibility initiatives in general.
>
>I was just thinking that things related to accessibility may fit in 
>the HumanML. I don't have particularly great examples yet, but 
>certainly, "deaf", "can't hear", "blind", "color blind" etc  *may* 
>fit in here and if not there shoudl certainly be consideration for 
>it. My difficulty just now is trying to think of exactly what would 
>*be* in HumanML and that is mainly because i only started looking 
>into it yesterday :)
>
>Anyone have any thoughts?
>
>cheers,
>Steven
>
>Steven Livingstone,
>Author Pro XML 2e and others.
>http://www.deltabis.com
>
>
>-----Original Message-----
>From: sarcasmo@fuse.net [mailto:sarcasmo@fuse.net]
>Sent: Wednesday, August 22, 2001 9:58 AM
>To: humanmarkup-comment@lists.oasis-open.org
>Subject: Deaf Matters
>
>Hello.  This may be an unusual request.
>
>I find the concept of HumanML interesting, and it led me to wonder
>if any discussions about Deaf users (such as myself) has appeared
>on the lists.  I say 'unusual', because American Sign Language, (ASL)
>for one, is not textually based.  However, I am sick and tired of the
>Deaf never being accounted for, either.  I've joked about coming
>up with an RFC-like outline for DeafML or ASLML (or maybe mildly
>threatened) in the past.
>
>Any thoughts?  Should I just bring this issue to the commitee?
>
>P.S. I did do a search through the 'htdig' form on your archive
>site with the keywords 'deaf', 'Deaf', and 'American Sign Language'
>and got zippo returns.
>
>Thanks for taking the time to read my letter.
>
>~darren
>
>
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-- 
Rex Brooks
GeoAddress: 1361-A Addison, Berkeley, CA, 94702 USA, Earth
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