Re: WCAG and "undue hardship"

The concept of undue hardship is relevant in the courtroom (or in a
tribunal hearing), but not in the guidelines.

I agree with an earlier observation from Charles that we do need to
establish the minimal requirements that can be expected of a user agent
for purposes of the guidelines, and these are likely to be rather limited.
XHTML Basic, now available as a public working draft, provides interesting
insight into what are thought to be the minimal capabilities of user
agents, including emerging mobile devices, and can obviously serve as a
starting point for further discussion. Of course, there are many reasons
why client-side scripts are either inaccessible, or unavailable to
identifiable groups of users; and these are reflected in the guidelines.
Whether the requirement to provide alternatives to such technology would
create "unjustifiable hardship" is relevant in the context of
anti-discrimination law, but not in determining what users' needs are with
respect to the design of accessible web content, the latter being the task
of the guidelines.

Disclaimer: the foregoing is a personal opinion only.

Received on Monday, 29 May 2000 19:58:13 UTC