De todos es conocido que hacer páginas que funcionen exclusivamente en un navegador, aparte de alejarse de los estándares, es malo, porque no garantiza que cualquier persona pueda entrar en ese sitio web. Si además, ese sitio web es del gobierno el problema es mayor, porque está discriminando a ciudadanos. Sobre todo cuando se hacen páginas que funcionen sólo en internet explorer,… que no existe en todos los sistemas operativos.
A continuación mostramos un par de citas textuales: la primera se corresponde con un documento publicado por la Biblioteca del Congreso de Estados Unidos, titulado Preregistration of Certain Unpublished Copyright Claims,…
developing the Copyright Office’s system for online preregistration, it is not entirely clear whether the system will be compatible with web browsers other than Microsoft Internet Explorer versions 5.1 and higher. Filers of preregistration applications will be able to employ these Internet Explorer browsers successfully. Support for Netscape 7.2, Firefox 1.0.3, and Mozilla 1.7.7 is planned but will not be available when preregistration goes into effect. Present users of these browsers may experience problems when filing claims.
La respuesta por parte del WAI del W3C, World Wide Web Consortium Comments on Copyright Office Proposal to
Use Single-Vendor Web Service, es bastante clara:
From a practical perspective, the single-vendor restriction will deny preregistration benefits entirely to broad classes of creators of covered copyrighted works. The flaw in the proposed implementation of the preregistration system lies in the failure to rely on voluntary consensus standards that are widely adopted and readily suited to the task identified by the Copyright Office. To illustrate the disadvantages of departing from standards-based solutions, we will consider the impact of the specific design proposed in the Supplementary Notice. While a large proportion of the marketplace uses the Microsoft Internet Explorer to browse the Web, certain classes of users will find it either impossible or extremely inconvenient to do so. Of the three popular desktop computing platforms in use at the present — Microsoft Windows, Apple Mac OS, and Linux/Unix — the latest versions of Internet Explorer are only available for the Microsoft Windows family of operating systems[2]. In some cases, users or their institutions may curtail the use of a browser temporarily or permanently based on flaws in the particular software product. So even though a user may have a software platform which would support Internet Explorer, that service may be disabled for some reason. Note that this is not a problem unique to Internet Explorer. Various browsers have suffered security breaches and the response, often, is to stop using that browser either permanently or until the security bug is fixed. During that time, the user would be entirely unable to use the preregistration system. A standards-based strategy would ensure that users can continue to access Copyright Office services notwithstanding the transient security problems that are inevitable for any single piece of software and have plagued all of the popular browsers at one time or another.
While one generally considers the Web to be a service used from a desktop or laptop computer, today’s Web applications are become increasingly mobile and reliant upon browsers written for cell phones, PDAs and other non-PC devices. Many of these devices come with standards-compliant Web browsers, but users often have no choice whatsoever in the type of browsing software installed. Some mobile devices are available with mobile versions of Internet Explorer, but many are not. The NPRM specifically cites the need to preregister movie dailies. It is easy to imagine that one would want to make such registration immediately upon completing a film shoot. In that case, the most practical and timely option might be to access the Copyright Office PRE form from a mobile Web-enabled cellphone or PDA. Restricting access to Internet Explorer only would then unfairly exclude those creators from the benefits of preregistration.
One of the distinct benefits of online access to government services is the increased opportunities it offers to people with disabilities. The policy of requiring use of a particular software product for accessing Copyright Office services, however, could put Web users with disabilities at a significant disadvantage. Users with disabilities often must augment their browsing software with special assistive software and/or hardware («assistive technology»). The combination of assistive technology and Web browser that a given individual with disabilities has installed and configured may or may not be based on Internet Explorer, given the varied accessibility features of mainstream browsers. In addition, some individuals with disabilities rely on alternative browsers (for instance, «talking browsers») that are designed to meet their specific needs. Users with disabilities rely on a standards-based Web to ensure that services they access on the Web will be usable through the variety of mainstream software and specialized assistive technologies that they use. A single-vendor strategy such as that proposed here will force many disabled users to re-tool their software and hardware environment, or face exclusion from the preregistration services. The practical effect of this exclusion will not only be on content creators themselves, but also on any employees of content creation firms whose job it is to make preregistration submissions.
Y yo sólo puedo recomendar la lectura de la respuesta del W3C completa, ya sabéis en World Wide Web Consortium Comments on Copyright Office Proposal to
Use Single-Vendor Web Service.
Una pregunta sin malicia: ¿A cuántas personas, sean o no desarrolladores webs, recomendaríais la lectura de estos dos documentos? A mí se me ocurre una lista bastante grande (desgraciadamente).
