- From: Jason White <jasonw@ariel.ucs.unimelb.edu.au>
- Date: Thu, 8 Jul 1999 13:35:24 +1000 (AEST)
- To: Web Content Accessibility Guidelines <w3c-wai-gl@w3.org>
It should also be added that there are several important constraints under which the guidelines operate: 1. They are expected to be implemented by tool developers (E.G. the Bobby evaluation software and tools being developed by the ER working group). 2. They may be referred to, directly or indirectly, in governmental policies and legal proceedings. 3. They can not be substantially changed without undergoing the W3C approval process. Several consequences follow from the above considerations. Firstly, the guidelines must be technically precise if they are to be implemented and used as the basis of regulation and policy. Second, they need to be as general as possible, so that they will not be rendered inadequate by every change in technology or in applicable technical standards. This is why the details of the requirements, and how to apply them, are left to the techniques document, and why the Education and Outreach working group has undertaken to document access requirements suitably for non-technical audiences. The guidelines are meant to be an authoritative reference, not a tutorial. It is to be expected that most people will concentrate on the techniques document or relevant educational materials, and refer to the guidelines only when it is time to check for conformance, by which stage they should be sufficiently familiar with the issues at stake to understand the terms in which the requirements are exprssed. Once an individual has reached this level of knowledge, the checklist offers a convenient point of reference which can be used in day-to-day web content development activities.
Received on Wednesday, 7 July 1999 23:35:30 UTC