I use the same definition of accessibility everywhere: accommodating features a person cannot change or cannot change easily.

It doesn’t refer solely to people with disabilities but also covers those that Paul refers to and others. After all, I think that Derek Featherstone made a pretty good case a year ago that parents with young children can require help with accessibility.

On the other hand, it doesn’t imply that we should be supporting people’s stubborn choices regards use of obsolete technology (although, it does infer supporting obsolete technology if people don’t have a choice in its use)

And I completely agree about legislating against discrimination rather than creating a checklist to force compliance. That doesn’t require thought, so it will never lead to innovation in the field

Yes, it is oolong… with a twist.

LongTerm Goal: Universal Accessibility. Help all web developers/designers work smarter by insuring that web technologies adhere to the same well thought out standards.

When conflicts arise between disability access and universal access…make the content accessible to people with disabilities and update the standard ASAP so there isn’t a conflict.

P.S. Is that oolong hopping around down there???

But I think I can legitimately ignore images off/ css on: it’s very easy for the site visitor to ameliorate the difficulty, compared with the problems of a blind user.

I’ve been called out for being inaccessible in the past for using an Image Replacement technique…that doesn’t work if you have images off, css on. But I can’t think of any user who us forced by disability or assistive technology to use the Web that way. So I don’t care if my site is inaccessible to someone who chooses to surf that way.

For what it’s worth, I often have to browse this way. I’ve recently moved house and have been without a phone line for two months, so my only browsing option has been using my mobile phone as a modem and a GPRS connection. There are two notable things about a GPRS connection: one is that it’s painfully slow – I’m talking about speeds about 1/4 or 1/8 as fast as a dial-up connection – and two is that it’s painfully expensive, as you pay per byte, not per minute. So images just get switched off; I can’t afford to download them. When I find a site that relies upon images – be they inline images or CSS background images – and has no text alternative then generally I’ll get mildly annoyed and either move on, never to return, or I’ll switch off CSS as well to access the content (I had to do this recently when visiting http://hicksdesign.co.uk/ for instance – the navigation was completely invisible until I switched CSS off).

You may consider this to be an unusual case, but I’ve been on plenty of train journeys lately where I’ve seen people using their mobile devices as modems, in conjunction with their laptops.

Furthermore, it’s not just people having to use mobile devices; I still know of plenty of dial-up users who browse with images off because it is so much faster. In this case, yes, it’s a choice they’ve made, but it’s a choice based on circumstance, not on personal preference.

Now, I’m not saying you should stop using CSS image replacement; it’s your website so it’s up to you what you do with it, and I do use it on my own sites as well to some extent. I do keep seeing people marginalising the ‘images off, CSS on’ people, though, as if this is a tiny group who are just being weird and annoying and only have themselves to blame; we don’t browse this way through choice.