Your comments on WCAG 2.0 Public Working Draft of May, 2007

Dear Wayne Dick,

Thank you for your comments on the 17 May 2007 Public Working Draft of
the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 2.0 (WCAG 2.0
http://www.w3.org/TR/2007/WD-WCAG20-20070517/). The WCAG Working Group
has reviewed all comments received on the May draft, and will be
publishing an updated Public Working Draft shortly. Before we do that,
we would like to know whether we have understood your comments
correctly, and also whether you are satisfied with our resolutions.

Please review our resolutions for the following comments, and reply to
us by 19 November 2007 at public-comments-wcag20@w3.org to say whether
you are satisfied. Note that this list is publicly archived. Note also
that we are not asking for new issues, nor for an updated review of
the entire document at this time.

Please see below for the text of comments that you submitted and our
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 WCAG 2.0 Editor's
Draft of May-October 2007 at
http://www.w3.org/WAI/GL/WCAG20/WD-WCAG20-20071102/

Thank you for your time reviewing and sending comments. Though we
cannot always do exactly what each commenter requests, all of the
comments are valuable to the development of WCAG 2.0.

Regards,

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: Accessibility Support of Web Technologies: The presentation
is unnecessarily difficult.
Source: http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-comments-wcag20/2007Jun/0315.html
(Issue ID: 2170)
----------------------------
Original Comment:
----------------------------

Accessibility supported is very tricky.  I think that this first
presentation is to strained.

Problem 1:  The barrier is not clear

Problem 2:  The concept of accessibility supported is tangled with it
relationship to conformance to WCAG 2.0 success criteria. This makes
both more difficult to understand.

Problem 3: The criteria for including a Web technology in a list of is
a complex conditional with two parallel outer clauses.  The inner
clauses are not stated in a parallel format reducing readability.

Problem 4: The second class of Accessible Supported Technologies -
those that are supported by a widely distributed user agent seems
ambiguous.  Consider this  example. I use a combination of reading
assistants to read.  I do not use Jaws, because many of the features
distract me.  Now if a Web technology was supported by JAWA (which is
widely distributed - and remember AT is a UA) but not my system or
reading assistants would I have to buy JAWS or learn the interface of
the free version just to access that resource.  To me that seems
disproportionately difficult for me, but where is the line.  Did you
mean that.  Did you mean mainstream user agent.  It is not clear, even
in the precise  List membership criteria "an accessibility supported
user agent is widely available".. (don't trust my quote exactly.)

My solution to 1-3 below does not address the Problem 4 - my ambiguity issue.

Now I tried to read it and translate it faithfully.  I moved some
notes into the text.  See my rewrite in the proposed change below.  If
my interpretation is wrong then consider the fact that a mathematician
and computer science professor read this carefully and got it wrong. A
garden variety web developer may not have a chance.

Now I tried to read it and translate it faithfully.  I moved some
notes into the text.  If my interpretation is wrong then consider the
fact that a mathematician and computer science department professor
read this carefully and got it wrong. A garden variety web developer
may not have a chance.

Proposed Change:
I have rewritten it at:

http://www.csulb.edu/~wed/eo/accsup.html

I stripped off the W3 logo, but kept the document style to keep the context.

EOWG found it too long to discuss today, so they had me send it along
directly.  I think you can benefit from some of the wording and
organization.  The original was quite difficult for me and my PhD is
in mathematics.

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

The URL provided did not work. But we took your comments and reworked
the conformance section to reflect them. Problem 1 was addressed by
pulling information together and providing links to Understanding
Conformance.   Problem 2 was addressed by putting the "accessibility
supported" aspect into a single item in conformance with definitions
and Understanding Accessibility Supported" to back it up.   Problem 3
was addressed by simplifying the definition list and formatting it
better and having parallel structure.    Problem 4 was addressed in
the Understanding Conformance writeup.

----------------------------------------------------------
Comment 2: Notes 1 and 2 on the Assistive Technology Definition
Source: http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-comments-wcag20/2007Jun/0316.html
(Issue ID: 2171)
----------------------------
Original Comment:
----------------------------

In Note 1, your distinction of mainstream user agent reads like it is
circular.  It is not circular, but it takes two readings to realize
it.

Note 2 seems related to Note 1 so I combined them.

Proposed Change:
New Combined Note 1 and Note 2 into



New: Note 1:  The distinction between mainstream user agents and
assistive technologies is real but not absolute. Many mainstream user
agents provide some features to assist individuals with disabilities.
These features are native assistive technologies contained within the
mainstream user agent. The basic difference is that mainstream user
agents target broad and diverse audiences that usually include people
with and without disabilities. Assistive technologies target narrowly
defined populations of users with specific disabilities. The
assistance provided by an assistive technology is more specific and
appropriate to the needs of its target users.

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

We have combined the notes, to read:

Note: The distinction between mainstream user agents and assistive
technologies is not absolute. Many mainstream user agents provide some
features to assist individuals with disabilities. The basic difference
is that mainstream user agents target broad and diverse audiences that
usually include people with and without disabilities. Assistive
technologies target narrowly defined populations of users with
specific disabilities. The assistance provided by an assistive
technology is more specific and appropriate to the needs of its target
users. The mainstream user agent may provide important services to
assistive technologies like retrieving Web content from program
objects or parsing markup into identifiable bundles.

----------------------------------------------------------
Comment 3: Accessible Technology
Source: http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-comments-wcag20/2007Jun/0328.html
(Issue ID: 2183)
----------------------------
Original Comment:
----------------------------

This is a redefinition based on POUR.  EO may have submitted this.
They assigned it to me, and at the end of the meeting this morning, I
was a little confused as what I should send alone and what Judy would
sent.  So you might want to do a quick compare with what EO sent over
for changes to assistive tecnology.

We thought splitting out target audience from the use made it easier
to read -Though I'm not married to the exact wording.

I really think defining AT in terms of POUR Principles really takes
better advantage of the conceptual foundation WCAG 2.0 has developed.

Proposed Change:
Look at
http://www.csulb.edu/~wed/eo/assistive.html

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

We have made a number of changes to the definition of assistive
technology to improve clarity. We believe these changes address the
substance of the issue you were raising and therefore did not adopt
the exact wording proposed.

Received on Sunday, 4 November 2007 02:31:28 UTC