Re: WCAG In Haiku; From William's Terse Version; Hope These Are Helpful

> We need to know what are the things we are asking
> for, and how are expecting to achieve them [...]

The problem starts as the charter and goes on from there.

[quote]
   as guidance for Web content authors and developers to
   create Web content that is accessible and usable by the
   widest audience possible
   - http://www.w3.org/WAI/GL/new-charter-2000
[end quote]

That's an impossible aim, and it's why GL goes around in circles. It's
probably the reason behind the frustration that's the reason behind the
flame wars as well.

My Haiku was a non-violent protest against the interface issues that
confound WCAG 2.0, but it has also become an expression of my thoughts
about GL in general. Personally, I think that GL cannot ever meet its
charter, and as such is in a form of constant charter violation. I think
the only way to resolve that is to recharter the group.

But I also think that nothing that I or anyone says to GL will make a
difference, including this email. GL has produced some good things over the
years (WCAG 1.0 was, after all is said and done, pretty good), but it
doesn't know when to stop. WCAG 2.0 should have taken months to produce,
but instead it has taken years. That is saddening.

I've drafted quite a number of emails that tried to express this better,
but like accessibility itself, no representation is adequate enough, so I'm
just going to throw caution to the wind and post this. It doesn't matter
either way.

BTW, as far as the Haiku thing goes, and Jonathan/Al/William/Chaals'
excellent replies, the point was indeed that we all enjoy different
representations of WCAG. WCAG 2.0 will never be perfect because we each
have our own definitions of what "perfect" is, and what's closest to
"perfection". To me, William's thing is the closest yet, followed by my
Haiku, followed by WCAG 2.0. Other people may disagree, and they'd be
right, because we can't settle down on one representation.

Why don't we just wrap up GL and all go down the pub instead?

--
Kindest Regards,
Sean B. Palmer
@prefix : <http://webns.net/roughterms/> .
:Sean :hasHomepage <http://purl.org/net/sbp/> .

Received on Wednesday, 22 August 2001 16:42:58 UTC