RE: What does "for example" mean

So far as WCAG 1.0 is concerned, there was never any suggestion during the
development of the guidelines that examples were intended to be normative.
Indeed, as the HTML-specific details were relegated to the Techniques, it
would have been inconsistent with the basic design of the document to hold
the examples to be normative. At this stage, with WCAG 1.0 behind us, I
suggest it is too late to change this without altering the meaning of the
document. Thus I propose the following resolutions:

1. Should the working group consider this necessary, add a note to the
WCAG 1.0 errata explaining that the examples in WCAG 1.0 are not normative
(that if there are means available of meeting the requirement in a
checkpoint without following the example, these are acceptable for
purposes of conformance).

2. Clarify the status of examples in WCAG 2.0, with appropriate
conventions (placing the question on the list of open issues).

3. For purposes of WCAG 2.0, and future versions of the other WAI
guidelines, take the issue to the xtech list, to determine what
conventions should govern the use of examples in future documents.

Received on Thursday, 8 March 2001 18:40:42 UTC