I’m posting this from Saigon (or Ho Chi Minh City for some) - it’s a great, frenetic, steamy, noisy, creative city and I really love it here. For some reason I am always more relaxed in busy and noisy places than in quiet ones.
I am here to get to know one of the developers I am working with at Travel Indochina and it’s a really interesting experience. How can you make someone understand the importance of accessibility and ensuring your site can be read by screen-readers when the cultural differences include not really thinking about the disabled? I visited an orphanage last time I was here and it was full of babies and children with down syndrome, blind, cerebal palsy, austism, etc, that had been abandoned by their parents. It’s understandable in a poor country, where some people can’t afford to feed able-bodied children, a disabled one would destroy the whole family.
So it’s an interesting challenge. I am explaining why we shouldn’t use Flash for navigation (screenreaders and search engines) and getting nods but not a lot of comprehension - after all, why would a blind person be using a computer in Vietnam; they would be begging on the streets instead.
Vietnam has some great IT people here, the whole country is a lot more developed since I was last here in 99. I’ll keep you posted on my web standards challenges.
This post is tagged under: Development
