Your comments on WCAG 2.0 Last Call Draft of April 2006

Dear Christophe Strobbe ,

Thank you for your comments on the 2006 Last Call Working Draft of the
Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 2.0 (WCAG 2.0
http://www.w3.org/TR/2006/WD-WCAG20-20060427/). We appreciate the
interest that you have taken in these guidelines.

We apologize for the delay in getting back to you. We received many
constructive comments, and sometimes addressing one issue would cause
us to revise wording covered by an earlier issue. We therefore waited
until all comments had been addressed before responding to commenters.

This message contains the comments you submitted and the resolutions
to your comments. Each comment includes a link to the archived copy of
your original comment on
http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-comments-wcag20/, and may
also include links to the relevant changes in the updated WCAG 2.0
Public Working Draft at http://www.w3.org/TR/2007/WD-WCAG20-20070517/.

PLEASE REVIEW the decisions  for the following comments and reply to
us by 7 June at public-comments-WCAG20@w3.org to say whether you are
satisfied with the decision taken. Note that this list is publicly
archived.

We also welcome your comments on the rest of the updated WCAG 2.0
Public Working Draft by 29 June 2007. We have revised the guidelines
and the accompanying documents substantially. A detailed summary of
issues, revisions, and rationales for changes is at
http://www.w3.org/WAI/GL/2007/05/change-summary.html . Please see
http://www.w3.org/WAI/ for more information about the current review.

Thank you,

Loretta Guarino Reid, WCAG WG Co-Chair
Gregg Vanderheiden, WCAG WG Co-Chair
Michael Cooper, WCAG WG Staff Contact

On behalf of the WCAG Working Group

----------------------------------------------------------
Comment 1:

Source: http://www.w3.org/mid/20060622133646.2D403DAF01@w3c4-bis.w3.org
(Issue ID: LC-879)

Part of Item:
Comment Type: question
Comment (including rationale for proposed change):

Please define or point to criteria for \"high inter-rater
reliability\". This is important for developing evaluation procedures
based on WCAG 2.0 (especially evaluation procedures that can be
repeated with the same results for the same content, although, after
reading http://www.socialresearchmethods.net/kb/reltypes.htm and
http://www2.chass.ncsu.edu/garson/pa765/reliab.htm, inter-rater
reliability is not the same thing as test-retest reliability).

There was an action item for research on inter-rater reliability
(http://www.w3.org/2005/04/27-wai-wcag-minutes.html#item02) but I
don\'t know what came out of it.

Proposed Change:

----------------------------
Response from Working Group:
----------------------------

Inter-rater reliability is the extent to which multiple evaluators of
a task or performance give identical ratings. This is often measured
by Cohen's kappa, where 0 indicates agreement due to chance alone and
1 indicating perfect agreement.  See
http://www.measurementexperts.org/instrument/term_pocket_terms.asp

Test-retest refers to the ability of the same person to come up with
the same results each time they rate something.

Inter-rater reliability is a tougher standard than test-retest.

We no longer use this term in WCAG 2.0. Instead, we have revised this
section to say "The same results should be obtained with a high level
of confidence when people who understand how people with different
types of disabilities use the Web test the same content."

----------------------------------------------------------
Comment 2:

Source: http://www.w3.org/mid/20060622134220.19D64DAF01@w3c4-bis.w3.org
(Issue ID: LC-880)

Part of Item:
Comment Type: substantive
Comment (including rationale for proposed change):

Item 2 of optional components of a conformance claim appears to add
little useful information to a conformance claim because it is a
subset of the baseline information (item 5 of required components of a
conformance claim). It seems more useful to me to state which
technologies in the baseline are not used or relied upon.

Proposed Change:

Remove item 2 of optional components of a conformance claim or replace
it with a list of technologies that are in the baseline but not relied
upon.

----------------------------
Response from Working Group:
----------------------------

The list of technologies relied upon is useful for users who may
prefer particular technologies. It is easier to search for a listed
technology than to search for technologies that are in a documented
list of accessibility-supported technologies, but are not in the
relied upon technologies.

Documented lists of accessibility-supported web technologies
(previously referred to as baselines) may include many more
technologies than are used on any given web site. For instance, there
may be many different multimedia formats included in such a list. We
wish to avoid the situation in which a web page that contains no
multimedia would need to list all of them.

----------------------------------------------------------
Comment 3:

Source: http://www.w3.org/mid/20060622134616.A1538DAF01@w3c4-bis.w3.org
(Issue ID: LC-881)

Part of Item:
Comment Type: substantive
Comment (including rationale for proposed change):

Item 4 of \'optional components of a conformance claim\' reads: \"A
list of user agents that the content has been tested on. This *should*
include assistive technologies\" (emphasis added).
\'Should\' is not a very useful verb in optional information: it boils
down to a non-requirement within a non-requirement.

Proposed Change:

Replace item 4 of \'optional components of a conformance claim\' with:
\"A list of user agents, including assistive technologies, that the
content has been tested on.\"

----------------------------
Response from Working Group:
----------------------------

The draft has been updated as proposed.

----------------------------------------------------------
Comment 4:

Source: http://www.w3.org/mid/20060622134837.D8B26DAF01@w3c4-bis.w3.org
(Issue ID: LC-882)

Part of Item:
Comment Type: substantive
Comment (including rationale for proposed change):

The note to SC 3.1.2 reads: \"This requirement does not apply to
individual words or phrases that have become part of the primary
language of the content.\": this is a problem for foreign words in a
passage or quote that is not in the primary language.
This wording was introduced in the June 2006 Working Draft; before
that, it read \"This does not include use of foreign words in text
where such usage is a standard extension of the language,\" but I
believe this was changed because the term \"foreign\" was considered
problematic.

Proposed Change:

Rephrase the note to: \"This requirement does not apply to individual
words or phrases that have become part of the language of the
immediately neighbouring text.\"

----------------------------
Response from Working Group:
----------------------------

We have revised the note to read, "This requirement does not apply to
individual words. It also does not apply to proper names, to technical
terms or to phrases that have become part of the language of the
context in which they are used."

----------------------------------------------------------
Comment 5:

Source: http://www.w3.org/mid/20060622135006.5EF9933201@kearny.w3.org
(Issue ID: LC-883)

Part of Item:
Comment Type: substantive
Comment (including rationale for proposed change):

SC 3.1.4 reads: \" A mechanism for finding the expanded form of
abbreviations is available.\"

Since technique G102 (Providing the expansion or explanation of an
abbreviation) devotes a lot of attention to situations where you
don\'t need to provide an expansion, but e.g. an explanation, this SC
could be reworded as \"A mechanism for finding the meaning of
abbreviations is available.\" Providing the expansion is only one way
to provide the meaning.

Proposed Change:

Reword SC 3.1.4 to: \"A mechanism for finding the meaning of
abbreviations is available.\"

----------------------------
Response from Working Group:
----------------------------

We have updated the success criterion to read, "A mechanism for
finding the expanded form or meaning of abbreviations is available."

----------------------------------------------------------
Comment 6:

Source: http://www.w3.org/mid/20060628180220.AF9E733201@kearny.w3.org
(Issue ID: LC-1406)

Part of Item: Intent
Comment Type: substantive
Comment (including rationale for proposed change):

I have been working on a Dutch translation of the guidelines and
noticed that \"legal transactions\" is hard to translate into Dutch in
a way that rings a bell with readers; I translated it as if it meant
\"transactions recognized by the law\".
Other translators may also have this problem because \"legal
transactions\" in the SC text is not clarified in the intent of HtM
2.5.3. If it means \"transactions where the person incurs a legally
binding obligation or benefit (a marriage license, a stock trade
(financial and legal), a will, a loan, adoption, signing up for the
army, a contract of any type, etc), please clarify this.

Proposed Change:

Add the following to the intent of HtM 2.5.3: \"Legal transactions are
transactions where someone incurs a legally binding obligation or
benefit, for example a marriage license, a stock trade (financial and
legal), a will, a loan, adoption, signing up for the army, a contract
of any type, etcetera.\"

----------------------------
Response from Working Group:
----------------------------

We have revised the success criterion (now SC 3.3.3) to read, "For
forms that cause legal commitments   or financial transactions to
occur, that modify or delete  user-controllable   data in data storage
systems, or that submit test responses, at least one of the following
is true..." We have also added a definition for legal commitments.

----------------------------------------------------------
Comment 7:

Source: http://www.w3.org/mid/20060817170452.F420113AB0@seamus.w3.org
(Issue ID: LC-1470)

Part of Item:
Comment Type: substantive
Comment (including rationale for proposed change):

The definition of Web unit is still ambiguous.

(1) If an HTML document (home.htm) has various linked stylesheets (one
for screen, one for print, one for projection, ...), these are not all
intended to be rendered together. I think the the following would all
count as Web units:
- home.htm with the CSS for \'screen\',
- home.htm with the CSS for \'projection\',
- home.htm with the CSS for \'braille\',
- home.htm with the CSS for \'aural\',
- ...
However, this is not clear from the definition. If these are all
different web units, it is also impossible to identify them with a
URL, because the URL is the same for each.

(2) If an HTML page uses an object element with one or more fallbacks
nested inside it (see the example slightly below
http://www.w3.org/TR/1999/REC-html401-19991224/struct/objects.html#idx-object-5),
I think the Web unit you claim conformance for is the HTML document
with the outermost object element (with the TheEarth.py applet).
However, the content of each of the nested object elements is not
meant to be rendered together with the content of all the other object
elements. Does that mean that there is a different web unit per
fallback/nested object element?

(3) If a web page uses frames, the content of some of the frames
depends on the user\'s interaction: e.g. clicking a link in the
navigation frame opens a different document in the content frame. So
the URL that identifies the frameset document does not always identify
the same Web unit, unless the Web unit is limited to what is loaded by
default.

(4) If user agent X requests URL http://www.example.com/ with MIME
type aaa/bbb and user agent Y requests the same URL with MIME type
ccc/ddd, and they get different web units because of the different
MIME type, the URL cannot be used to differentiate between the two web
units. Does that mean these are different Web  units according to the
current definition?

Most of this was previously discussed on the ERT mailing list in the
context of conformance claims (see
http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-wai-ert/2006May/0029.html
and next messages in the same thread) and forwarded to the GL list
(http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/w3c-wai-gl/2006AprJun/0181.html).

Proposed Change:

----------------------------
Response from Working Group:
----------------------------

We have revised the guidelines and eliminated the word "Web unit" in
favor of "Web page." We have defined "Web page"as follows (see
http://www.w3.org/TR/2007/WD-WCAG20-20070517/#webpagedef ):

Web page

    a resource that is referenced by a URI and is not embedded in
another resource, plus any other resources that are used in the
rendering or intended to be rendered together with it

    Note: Although any "other resources" would be rendered together
with the primary resource, they would not necessarily be rendered
simultaneously with each other.

    Example 1: When you enter http://shopping.example.com/ in your
browser you enter a movie-like interactive shopping environment where
you visually move about a store dragging products off of the shelves
around you into a visual shopping cart in front of you. Clicking on a
product causes it to be demonstrated with a specification sheet
floating alongside.

    Example 2: A Web resource including all embedded images and media.

    Example 3: A Web mail program built using Asynchronous JavaScript
and XML (AJAX). The program lives entirely at http://mail.example.com,
but includes an inbox, a contacts area and a calendar. Links or
buttons are provided that cause the the inbox, contacts, or calendar
to display, but do not change the URL of the page as a whole.

    Example 4: A customizable portal site, where users can choose
content to display from a set of different content modules.

To answer your questions:

According to our definition.

#1 -   They are all the same Web page because they are all the same
primary resource with different secondary resources rendered with
them.

#2 Again they are all the same Web page including all the nested
versions.   The secondary resources do not need to be rendered
simultaneously with each other, only with the primary, to be part of
the same Web page.

Regarding your concern #3, the definition of Web page is purposefully
written to include dynamic content that comes from the same URI.  So
all of the content from all the variations would be part of the web
page. If the contents of the frames can be loaded separately as well,
then they would also be separate Web pages as well. But they would
still be part of the frame Web page.

#4  If the different mime type would cause a different PRIMARY
resource to be loaded, then they would be different Web pages.   If
you included that URI in your claim, all Web pages from that URI would
have to be conform (meet the success criterion or have a mechanism to
obtain a page with the same content that did).


----------------------------------------------------------
Comment 8:

Source: http://www.w3.org/mid/20060817172637.5E1A8D7830@saba.w3.mag.keio.ac.jp
(Issue ID: LC-1471)

Part of Item:
Comment Type: editorial
Comment (including rationale for proposed change):

While translating the guidelines into Dutch
(http://purl.org/NET/error404/xp/wcag20/WD-WCAG20-20060427/guidelines.html)
I ran into the following problem: \"legal\" (in SC 2.5.3) can be
translated into Dutch as:
- \"wettig\" (compliant with the law, as opposed to \"illegal\", or
- \"wettelijk\" (described in law).
I picked the second meaning, but it would be clearer if the SC said:
\"commitments recognized by the law\" or \"legal commitments\" instead
of \"legal transactions\".

Proposed Change:

Reword SC 2.5.3 from \"For forms that cause legal or financial
transactions to occur ...\" to \"For forms that cause legal
commitments or financial transactions to occur ...\" or to \"For forms
that cause commitments recognized by the law, that cuase financial
transactions to occur ...\".

Alternatively/additionally, clarify \"legal transaction\" (or the
substituted term) in HtM 2.5.3, with something like:
\"Legal transactions are transactions where the person incurs a
legally binding obligation or benefit (a marriage license, a stock
trade (financial and legal), a will, a loan, adoption, signing up for
the army, a contract of any type, etcetera).\" (And thank Gregg for
the proposed wording.)

----------------------------
Response from Working Group:
----------------------------

We have revised the success criterion to read, "For forms that cause
legal commitments or financial transactions to occur, that modify or
delete user-controllable data in data storage systems, or that submit
test responses, at least one of the following is true..." We have also
added a definition for legal committments.

----------------------------------------------------------
Comment 9:

Source: http://www.w3.org/mid/20060921130058.738FC66364@dolph.w3.org
(Issue ID: LC-1517)

Part of Item:
Comment Type: general comment
Comment (including rationale for proposed change):

If a conformance claim is made for http://example.com/, does this
include subdomains like http://www.example.com/,
http://lists.example.com/ and http://cvs.example.com/?
I would assume that they are all covered, unless some of them are
explicitly excluded. This approach would be in line with RDF Content
Labels [http://www.w3.org/2004/12/q/doc/content-labels-schema.htm] and
URI Pattern Matching by the Web Content Labels Incubator Group
[http://www.w3.org/2005/Incubator/wcl/matching.html].

Proposed Change:

Add the following to item 6 of \"Required components of a conformance claim\":
\"If only the URI of a host (e.g. http://example.com) is given without
specifying subdomains, all subdomains (e.g. http://www.example.com/
and http://lists.example.com) are assumed to be covered, unless some
subdomains are explicitly excluded.\"

----------------------------
Response from Working Group:
----------------------------

We have clarified item 4 under "Required components of conformance claim:"

A description of the URIs that the claim is being made for, including
whether subdomains are included in the claim.

----------------------------------------------------------
Comment 10:

Source: http://www.w3.org/mid/20060929044426.E940947BA1@mojo.w3.org
(Issue ID: LC-1518)

Part of Item: Resources
Comment Type: general comment
Comment (including rationale for proposed change):

A few links are outdated; a few can be added.

Proposed Change:

* Remove \'Search Engine World HTML Validation Service\' (no longer available).
* Remove \'XSD Schema Validator by GotDotNet\' (no longer available).
* Remove \'This article is also available as a single file: Working with XML.\'
* Change http://www.nvu.com/index.html to http://www.nvu.com/
* Add \'Off-line CSS Validator – A clipbook for NoteTab\'
(http://www.tuke.sk/podlubny/oc.html)
* Add \'Schema Validator\'
(http://www.xmlforasp.net/SchemaValidator.aspx): this is a validator
that allows you to paste XML and W3C XML Schema code into text boxes
to validate XML code.
* Add \'XML Nanny\' (http://www.xmlnanny.com/), a graphical tool for
validating XML and XHTML, with support for DTD, W3C XML Schema, RELAX
NG and Schematron (Max OX X).

----------------------------
Response from Working Group:
----------------------------

Thanks. The additions/deletions have been implemented as proposed.

----------------------------------------------------------
Comment 11:

Source: http://www.w3.org/mid/20060929045744.5AF6547BA1@mojo.w3.org
(Issue ID: LC-1519)

Part of Item: Examples
Comment Type: editorial
Comment (including rationale for proposed change):

In example 3, the double backslash in the dir attribute (and the
explanation above it) should be a single forward slash.

Proposed Change:

Replace dev\\\\web (double backslash) with dev/web (single forward slash).

----------------------------
Response from Working Group:
----------------------------

Done.

----------------------------------------------------------
Comment 12:

Source: http://www.w3.org/mid/20061206121619.BA535BDA8@w3c4.w3.org
(Issue ID: LC-1535)

Part of Item: Intent
Comment Type: substantive
Comment (including rationale for proposed change):

Please clarify how one would determine the reading ability required by
a multilingual Web unit or page, for example an English text with long
quotes in French.

Proposed Change:

One could consider the following approach: for each language that
constitutes at least 5% of the content and that is used in full
sentences or paragraphs (not just individual words or phrases),
determine the reading ability required by the content in that
language. Compare the scores for each language and use the \"worst\"
score as the readability score for the whole Web unit or page.

----------------------------
Response from Working Group:
----------------------------

We have added the following paragraph to the Intent section of How to
Meet 3.1.5:

When a web page contains multiple languages, a readability result
should be calculated for each language that constitutes at least 5% of
the content and that is used in full sentences or paragraphs (not just
individual words or phrases). The overall readability of the page
should be judged on the language that yields the worst readability
results.

----------------------------------------------------------
Comment 13:

Source: http://www.w3.org/mid/20061206120019.2EE54BDA8@w3c4.w3.org
(Issue ID: LC-1536)

Part of Item:
Comment Type: substantive
Comment (including rationale for proposed change):

Should the baseline also identify the human or natural languages that
the content covered by the conformance claim relies upon?
The rationale for this is twofold.
1. Success criteria 3.1.1 and 3.1.2 require language markup,
especially for the benefit of users of speech synthesis and/or
braille, but this language markup is of little benefit if the
languages are not supported by, for example, the user\'s speech
synthesis software.
2. Success criterion 3.1.5 requires supplemental content if text
requires a reading ability more advanced than the lower secondary
education level, but the algorithms or methods to determine the
required reading ability are language-specific. (Similarly, the
techniques you use to conform to WCAG depend on the technologies in
your baseline.)

Proposed Change:

Consider adding the human languages that the content relies upon to
the baseline. (This would imply a distinction between \"baseline
technologies\", i.e. the current baseline concept, and \"baseline
human languages\".)

----------------------------
Response from Working Group:
----------------------------

The conformance section of WCAG2 has been completely rewritten. The
term "baseline" has been replaced by "accessibility-supported Web
technologies". The issue of what it means to be an
accessibility-supported Web technology is addressed in the section
"Accessibility Support of Web Technologies" at
http://www.w3.org/TR/2007/WD-WCAG20-20070517/#accessibility-support .

In analyzing whether a technology is accessibility supported, language
support can and should be taken into account. This would be reflected
in the documentation for the accessibility support including the
language support of the various assistive technologies used in the
analysis/report.

Received on Thursday, 17 May 2007 23:32:38 UTC