Technologies relied upon: comment on WCAG-EM 1.0 editors draft

The following comments apply to the 28 January 2013 editors draft. As I have
not participated in this process, my observations may be misguided or
redundant (that's the risk one takes as a public commentator).

This is an excellent document and a pleasure to review. I only have one
substantive issue to mention.

The list of technologies relied upon by the Website, per WCAG 2.0 conformance
requirements, is introduced only at step 2.d of the evaluation procedure,
where the evaluator is required to examine the Website to identify the
technologies to be included in the list. However, this list of relied upon
technologies can also be used as follows in an accessibility evaluation:

Step I: Determine a list of technologies which the evaluator considers it
appropriate for the Website to "rely upon". This list may be derived, for
example, from information about the technologies (including specific version
thereof) likely to be available to members of the intended audience of the
Website who have disabilities. Let's call it the "target list of technologies
relied upon".

Step II: perform step 2.d of the evaluation as defined in WCAG-EM.

Step III: Identify technologies relied upon (per step II) which are not
included in the target list of technologies relied upon. Report such
discrepancies and, if a detailed report is to be given, specify the WCAG 2.0
success criteria which rely upon technologies not included in the target list.

Obviously, the list of technologies relied upon need not be used as described
above, but I think it is the intent of some evaluators to apply it in this
fashion and, as I remember, this was recognized in the formative discussions
of this topic during the development of WCAG 2.0.

If this approach is considered desirable, then I propose the following
amendments to the methodology:

1. Insert step I (above) as an optional component of step 1 of the
methodology.

2. Insert step III above appropriately as an optional component of step 5 of
the methodology.

I hope these comments are helpful.

Received on Monday, 11 February 2013 09:06:07 UTC