Linking from inaccessible documents to alternative, accessible , versions

This issue was raised by Eric and discussed in today's teleconference.
How was it ultimately resolved? As I recall, we proceeded to consider
whether any change was necessary to the conformance statement in order to
allow a pair of documents (an inaccessible version paired with an
accessible counterpart) to satisfy the conformance requirements. We
concluded that no change was needed, as the scope of the conformance claim
could be defined by the content developer in such a way as to encompass
both documents (or, more generally, series of inaccessible and alternative
pages on a web site) which colectively satisfy the guidelines.

However, this is a separate issue from Eric's suggestion that a "one to
many relation", that is to say, a single entry point to a series of
programmatically generated documents, of which the user may choose an
accessible or inaccessible version, should be permitted to meet the
requirement that the accessible alternative be linked to the inaccessible
(primary) content. How was this aspect of the matter resolved, if at all?
Wendy correctly argued that as the web is a "random access" medium
(especially as a result of the availability of indexing search engines), a
user could in principle reach a site via any of its component documents,
not just the home page. Also, if the alternative versions are generated
automatically, it should likewise be possible to generate links between
the two versions of the same document.

Thus the linking requirement seems reasonable, but, unless I have
forgotten a portion of today's conversation (which is quite likely), it
does not seem that the working group reached a final consensus on this
point.

Received on Thursday, 15 April 1999 23:21:14 UTC