ATAG 2.0 Comments

The following comments are based on the 11 January 2007 WCAG discussion 
and review of ATAG 2.0.

1.) Suggest moving the section "How the guidelines are organized" to a 
location earlier in the document. Knowing about Part A and Part B seems 
important to understanding much of what is in conformance (ex. relative 
vs. regular priority).

2.) I have a number of concerns about the content type-specific WCAG 
benchmark:
a.) Who publishes benchmark documents? This is a major coordination 
point between the working groups that needs discussion.
b.) Since WCAG 2.0 techniques say nothing about conformance to WCAG 
itself, the benchmark document should refer to some combination of the 
How to Meet and techniques documents. Not sure his model works unless 
the benchmark specifies sufficient techniques or combinations of 
techniques that meet WCAG 2.0. Has the ATAG WG created any sample 
benchmark documentations to illustrate how this might work?
c.) All of the references to WCAG 2.0 techniques documents 
([WCAG20-TECHS-GENERAL], [WCAG20-TECHS-CSS], [WCAG20-TECHS-HTML], 
[WCAG20-TECHS-SCRIPTING]) should refer to 
http://www.w3.org/TR/WCAG20-TECHS/ (the WG is no longer publishing 
tech-specific techniques documents)
d.) "All of the requirements in the Benchmark become normative..." This 
implies that a benchmark document can define conformance to WCAG 2.0, 
but it's not clear how a benchmark document would address (1) situations 
in WCAG 2.0 How to meet documents and (2) situations where multiple 
sufficient techniques or combinations of techniques meet a criterion. 
The concern here is that it sounds like a benchmark can include only a 
subset of the WCAG 2.0 sufficient techniques and then be used to define 
(by example) WCAG 2.0 conformance.

3.) The section "How the guidelines are organized" does a nice job of 
describing which sections and subsections of a guidelines are 
informative vs. normative. It might be useful to incorporate something 
similar in the WCAG 2.0 intro.

4.) A.0.1 SC1 seems like it should mention content rather than just 
functionality. (ex. Content that includes Web-based authoring tool user 
interface functionality must conform to WCAG.) WCAG 2.0's use of 
"functionality" (def. processes and outcomes achievable through user 
action) may be part of what's confusing about this.

5.) Would removing the distinction between relative priority and regular 
priority checkpoints make conformance easier to understand? Given that 
there's no difference in a conformance claim (A, AA, and AAA the same 
thing regardless of checkpoint priority), I'm not sure it's necessary to 
make a distinction here. I found myself spending a lot of time trying to 
understand the difference between the two as I worked through the intro, 
but it seems like this is covered through requirements for conformance 
claims and sufficient techniques for the relative checkpoints.

6.) While some terms common to ATAG 2.0 and WCAG 2.0 are defined the 
same way, it seems that others are not. (ex ATAG "equivalent 
alternative" seems to be the same as WCAG "alternative version") It 
would be a good idea for the documents to agree on definitions where 
possible. Note that some WCAG definitions have changed since our last TR 
draft based on public comments and ATAG definitions may need to be 
updated accordingly. Also, some definitions (ex. red and general flash 
threshold may still change based on WCAG 2.0 comments.)

7.) definition of "available programmatically" - This seems only to say 
that it's possible for the information to be communicated, not that it 
has been. Is there something in ATAG that requires that information that 
"should" be available to AT actually is available? The concern here is 
that these SC would be met if the info is available regardless of 
whether AT actually make use of it.

8.) (bug) All of the icons used in part A and B of the draft 
implementation techniques documents include relative links to 
nonexistent anchors.

Congratulations on the updated draft!

-Ben

-- 
Ben Caldwell | <caldwell@trace.wisc.edu>
Trace Research and Development Center <http://trace.wisc.edu>

Received on Thursday, 11 January 2007 22:33:06 UTC