Plain English? I wish!

To set the scene, I am your average garden-variety web developer. I am a
simple soul, with college education, good English skills and above all, good
HTML skills. I spend all day, every day, producing sites - for everything
from the local dentist to the multi-million pound nation-wide high street
chains.

 

WCAG 2 has disappointed me.

 

For a start, I just don't understand it. I am not stupid, but I just don't
understand how it applies to what I build. How can I bear all that in mind
when going through the stages of planning/building/testing a site?

 

It's going to take months to combine that into my daily routine and to be
honest I cannot see the commercial benefit. Most of the sites I build, I
make them WCAG 1 level 2 accessible out of good practice and for good karma.
I like it; I enjoy the sense of responsibility I get from it. It sets me
apart from the monkeys knocking sites out in the back bedroom. 

 

WCAG 2 is so difficult, why would I bother? My customers do not care! If
they do, then they will have to pay me a lot to have a compliant site, as
the extra amount of time involved does not come for free.

 

If WCAG 2 was actually simple - a simple to understand a plain-English check
list (i.e. - do you use PDF, see page 3, if not continue to page 4 >
checklist) along with highly automated checking system, then we are going to
see a lot more developers producing compliant sites. Just dream.an internet
with more and more compliant web sites. Is that not what we all want?

 

Received on Friday, 26 May 2006 04:32:49 UTC