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

Dear HREOC,

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: Addressing the needs of people with cognitive, language or
learning disabilities
Source: http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-comments-wcag20/2007Jul/0037.html
(Issue ID: 2320)
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Original Comment:
----------------------------

Concern and Rationale:
We regret that the Guidelines in their current form do not adequately
address the needs of people with cognitive, language or learning
disabilities. We believe that attention to the needs of these users is
a necessary part of accessibility, and that websites which do not
address these needs are, to that extent, inaccessible. However, we do
acknowledge the challenges of addressing these needs through
guidelines developed within a testable framework, and we encourage the
W3C to conduct more research in this area to identify best-practice
solutions, and to expand the Guidelines once more comprehensive
information has been obtained. We also urge the development committee
to re-examine the Guidelines in case it can identify a greater number
of success criteria that relate to the needs of people with cognitive,
language or learning disabilities and which meet the 80% confidence
level for human testing. In the meantime, we would recommend a
stronger statement about the importance of addressing the needs of
these user groups so that developers do not use WCAG2.0 as an escape
route for ignoring them. Therefore:

Suggested Change:
After "There is a need for more research and development in this
important area": Delete period, add Comma, and the following text:
"and developers should seek relevant expert advice about current best
practice to ensure that web content is accessible as far as possible
to people with these disabilities."

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

The Working Group hoped that the inclusion of the sentence "There is a
need for more research and development in this important area." would
encourage support in the research community for additional work in
these areas. At the request of several reviewers, we have removed it.

We added the following sentence based on comments submitted:
"Authors are encouraged to consider the full range of techniques,
including the advisory techniques, as well as to seek relevant advice
about current best practice to ensure that Web content is accessible,
as far as possible, to this community."

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Comment 2: Define testability in glossary
Source: http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-comments-wcag20/2007Jul/0037.html
(Issue ID: 2321)
----------------------------
Original Comment:
----------------------------

Concern and Rationale:
We support endeavours to incorporate principles of testability into
accessibility standards and guidelines, as this provides greater
certainty for those who seek to implement them and also for those who
wish to assess the extent to which they have been followed. However,
there is no formal definition of "testable" and "testability" either
in the Introduction or in the Glossary of WCAG2.0. In particular,
there is no mention of the 80% confidence level requirement for human
testers. Given the significance of testability within the WCAG2.0
framework, we suggest providing a complete normative definition that
highlights the role of both machine and human testing, together with a
discussion of the rationale of the concept. The absence of such
definition and discussion limits the ability of policy-makers to
interpret, promote and apply the concept accurately.

Suggested Change:
Link "testable", In the sentence "All WCAG 2.0 success criteria are
written to be testable." to a definition in the Glossary. Add
definition to Glossary.

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

Our current introduction has been shortened and there is only a part
of single sentence that mentions testing as follows.

"WCAG 2.0 builds on WCAG 1.0 [WCAG10] and is designed to apply broadly
to different Web technologies now and in the future, and to be
testable with a combination of automated testing and human
evaluation."

However in our Understanding WCAG document we go into more detail as follows:

"All WCAG 2.0 success criteria are written as testable criteria for
objectively determining if content satisfies them. Testing the success
criteria would involve a combination of automated testing and human
evaluation. The content should be tested by those who understand how
people with different types of disabilities use the Web.

Testing and testable in the context refer to functional testing, that
is verifying that the content functions as expected, or in this case,
that it satisfies the success criteria. Although content may satisfy
all success criteria, the content may not always be usable by people
with a wide variety of disabilities. Therefore, usability testing is
recommended, in addition to the required functional testing. Usability
testing aims to determine how well people can use the content for its
intended purpose. It is recommended that users with disabilities be
included in test groups when performing usability testing."

Received on Sunday, 4 November 2007 04:35:21 UTC