Your comments on WCAG 2.0 Last Call Draft of April 2006

Dear Liddy Nevile ,

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

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Comment 1:

Source: http://www.w3.org/mid/20060614003228.646BD33205@kearny.w3.org
(Issue ID: LC-799)

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

I do not have a specific change but am very concerned that it is
understood and part of WCAG 2.0 that all resources should carry or
refer to a description of their accessibility characteristics. Without
such a description, the best resources will not be found and useful in
some cases and in others, a resource that is not universally
accessible will not be made available to someone who could use it even
if others cannot.

Proposed Change:

I propose that the description of the resource be included as a
requirement for the \'accessibility\' of the resource in order to make
it accessible to those who can use it.

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

While the working group agrees that metadata describing the
accessibility of a resource is beneficial for a number of reasons,
requirements to include this information have not been included in
WCAG 2.0. There are many reasons we do not require this including the
fact that conformance claims are not always required, may not be
available publicly and in some cases can not be made at all due to
legal constraints.

Although we are not changing WCAG conformance, we recognize the value
of what you request. Therefore, the WG plans to provide techniques for
generating conformance claims as well as guidance about the various
strategies for providing accessibility metadata that are available
today in various WCAG 2.0 supplemantary materials.

This approach allows us to revise recommendations about accessibility
metadata over time to adapt to changing technologies and
recommendations related to generating and providing this information.

Received on Thursday, 17 May 2007 23:39:29 UTC