Re: Editorial: WCAG 2.0 is hard to connect to concrete HTML authoring

On Wed, Aug 20, 2008 at 2:21 AM, Henri Sivonen <hsivonen@iki.fi> wrote:
>
> This comment applies to the whole set of WCAG 2.0 documents as is an
> editorial comment.
>
> I tried to compare alt advice in the HTML5 draft with WCAG 2.0. I found that
> matching a concrete image use case to suggested HTML syntax is harder when
> reading WCAG 2.0 than when reading HTML5.
>
> Splitting the content of WCAG 2.0 across three documents and trying to
> operate on a technology-agnostic abstraction level makes it WCAG 2.0 less
> approachable than a document that covers concrete cases using a specific
> markup language as the example.
>
> Proposed solution: Making the Understanding document the spec and
> introducing things by concrete example cases instead of abstract terms.
>
> --
> Henri Sivonen
> hsivonen@iki.fi
> http://hsivonen.iki.fi/
>
>
================================
Response from the Working Group
================================
One of the requirements of WCAG <http://www.w3.org/TR/wcag2-req/> is
to ensure that requirements may be applied across technologies and to
ensure that the revision is "backwards and forward compatible". We
agree that this makes the language of the guidelines more abstract and
we have provided the Understanding and Techniques documents to help
authors better understand how to apply the guidelines when using
different technologies.

Note that because the Understanding and Techniques documents are not
normative, it possible for the working group to add to and revise them
without going back through the W3C Recommendation process. This will,
for example, make it possible for us to include HTML5 techniques when
it becomes a recommendation.

How to Meet WCAG 2.0 <http://www.w3.org/WAI/WCAG20/quickref/> already
addresses part of this concern as it can be configured to show only
the techniques in the technologies of interest.

We hope that once WCAG 2.0 has become a Recommendation and is stable,
additional document and resources will be created that will make it
easier for authors who are only interested in specific technologies.


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

Received on Friday, 29 August 2008 20:51:07 UTC