AUWG action: re: accessibility supported uses

Hi all,

(I am cc'ing WAI-CG because of interest expressed there re: coordinating 
this issue)

I took this action on the Monday meeting...

ACTION: JR clarify in the "accessibility supported" piece that the onus
is on the installer/author

Updated proposal:
(original: 
http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/w3c-wai-au/2010JanMar/0011.html)

(1) If possible, let's stick with "conforms to WCAG 2.0" with the extra 
wording.

(2) Add link in definition "Accessible web content is web content that 
conforms to a particular level of WCAG 2.0 (see *Relationship to WCAG 
2.0* section).

(3) Rewording "Relationship to the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines
(WCAG) 2.0" - trying to make it shorter and clearer:

Because WCAG 2.0 is the most recent W3C Recommendation regarding web 
content accessibility, ATAG 2.0 frequently refers to WCAG 2.0 
conformance in order to set requirements for (1) the accessibility of 
web-based authoring tool user interfaces (Part A) and (2) how authors 
should be enabled, supported, and guided towards producing accessible 
web content (Part B).

Note on "accessibility-supported ways of using technologies":

Part of conformance to WCAG 2.0 is the requirement that "only
accessibility-supported ways of using technologies are relied upon to
satisfy the [WCAG 2.0] success criteria. Any information or 
functionality that is provided in a way that is not accessibility 
supported is also available in a way that is accessibility supported." 
In broad terms, a technology is considered accessibility supported when 
(1) the way that the Web content technology is used is supported by 
users' assistive technology and (2) the Web content technology has 
accessibility-supported user agents that are available to users.

This concept is not easily extended to authoring tools because many 
tools can be installed and used in a variety of environments with 
differing availabilities for assistive technologies and user agents 
(e.g., private intranets versus public websites, monolingual sites 
versus multilingual sites, etc.). Therefore:

*For the purposes of ATAG 2.0 conformance, the accessibility-supported 
requirement is waived. However, once an authoring tool has been 
installed and put into use, it would be appropriate for the web content 
it produces (and the authoring tool user interface of web-based 
authoring tools) to be assessed for WCAG 2.0 conformance within its 
environment, including whether the accessibility-supported requirement 
is met.*


Cheers,
Jan


-- 
(Mr) Jan Richards, M.Sc.
jan.richards@utoronto.ca | 416-946-7060

Adaptive Technology Resource Centre (ATRC)
Faculty of Information | University of Toronto

Received on Thursday, 21 January 2010 19:24:03 UTC