There is a current draft of the specification for the 'news' and 'nntp' URI
schemes available as an Internet-Draft at

http://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-ellermann-news-nntp-uri-08

I have been asked to lend a voice saying that the Web needs this
scheme and IETF should act to give it RFC status.  Since my fingerprints
are on this draft, I have an ego incentive to see the document elevated.
Better I should have some facts and not just ego to base my advocacy on.

This scheme allows content that arises in a newsgroup and referenced
from a web page to be read as news rather than forcing the user to go
through a Web interface to the newsgroup.

As best I can figure out, for someone using a screen reader, the
integration with the installed news-reader is significantly more usable
than going through a web browser and a web gateway to the newsgroup.

Is that still true?

This group allows access by Mail, by News, and by HTTP.  Are there people
who actually use news/nntp to participate in this group?  Are there people
with disabilities who use that protocol because it is their best option?

Al

1. A single, familiar user interface, provided by the user's news reader
(which may also serve as her/his mail reader depending on features) is
available to all NNTP services. This user interface can be chosen (by the user
or the user's technical support person) to match the user's access needs,
skill level, etc., and to work well with any assistive technology that may be
involved.

2. As a result, only one user interface need be learned; this is better than
learning and having to deal with the potential limitations of multiple Web
gateways provided by different sites, e.g., Mozilla, Gmane, and others.

3. Features such as threading and article scoring are available. These are
especially useful with a screen reader or other assistive technology, owing to
the linear nature of braille or speech output, which makes scanning an entire
list for articles of interest an inherently slow process. Threaded displays
provide hierarchical navigation that substantially improve this process.

4. NNTP can be a good complement to a web interface. I don't like Web fora:
each forum provider tends to have its own user interface which has to be
learned individually. These user interfaces often lack the valuable features
mentioned above of news readers, and may have other accessibility
difficulties. In general, offering NNTP would be a valuable addition to any
HTML (or XHTML/CSS/Ecmascript-style) user interface that may be provided.

It may be of interest to note that I plan to give a conference presentation at
Ozewai 2007 (http://www.ozewai.org/) on this very subject, citing NNTP as a
primary example, but also discussing the advantages of XMPP and other standard
protocols as means of making Web services more accessible.

I read this group as a mailing list. However, I frequently use
nntp://news.gmane.org/ (see also http://www.gmane.org/) and I wish there were
more services like it as an alternative to the ubiquitous "Web fora", which
usually do a very poor job of reinventing what NNTP newsgroups provided years
ago.