RE: What determines what goes in level 1, 2, 3 etc as success cri teria

I agree: I think it's essential that the Guidelines document itself include
clear explnation of the rationale for assigning success criteria to level 1,
2, or 3.  I would argue for including this explanation in the Introduction
rather than in the Appendices.  Including it in the Introduction is a
statement on our part: unerstanding the rationale is an important aspect of
understanding the Guidelines themselves.  This seems to me in keeping with
the spirit of Guideline 4, by the way.

John

John Slatin, Ph.D.
Director, Institute for Technology & Learning
University of Texas at Austin
FAC 248C, Mail code G9600
Austin, TX 78712
ph 512-495-4288, f 512-495-4524
email jslatin@mail.utexas.edu
web http://www.ital.utexas.edu
 


-----Original Message-----
From: Jason White [mailto:jasonw@ariel.ucs.unimelb.edu.au] 
Sent: Wednesday, August 07, 2002 6:17 am
To: GV@trace.wisc.edu
Cc: w3c-wai-gl@w3.org
Subject: Re: What determines what goes in level 1, 2, 3 etc as success
criteria



I think Gregg's summary is an accurate description of how we have made
decisions in the past, and how they should be made in the future.

I still think, after we have agreed on these (or similar) principles, we
should write them up and include a summary in the guidelines document itself
so that readers can gain a greater understanding of what success criteria
are, and how the conformance levels are defined. By doing so, we reduce
(but, realistically, cannot eliminate) the risk that the docment will be
inadvertently misused by those who are unaware of the rationale underlying
the definitions of success criteria and conformance levels. That is, the
guidelines document should be clear in itself as to how the success criteria
and conformance levels are defined; a reader should not have to search for
our requirements document to obtain this degree of insight (though
naturally, the requirements document will elaborate our thinking to a far
greater extent than any rationale set forth in the guidelines).

Instead of a "level 4", we could simply head the level "advice", as that is
what it is. In that case, we could easily refer to it in success criteria,
as in:

The content has been reviewed, taking into account the advice under this
checkpoint, and is believed to be... where "advice" is a link to the
corresponding advice section for the particular checkpoint.

which is what we originally intended to provide for in our assurance
requirements (see my earlier message on the subject).

As Gregg pointed out, the "advice" then becomes part of the requirement in
as much as it has to be taken into consideration in conducting the review
required by the level 2 success criteria. As Gregg also said, with this
approach, the advice can't easily be omitted from checklists.

Thus my proposal is:
Call the "advisory" section "advice"; explain its purpose in the
introduction. Explain, in the introduction or an appendix, the rationale
behind the success criteria and conformance levels.

One more proposal and I shall finish for the night: for the purpose of
facilitating transitions, we should document precisely what conformance
claims under WCAG 2.0 can be made in respect of content that meets levels A,
double-A and tripple-A of WCAG 1.0, including the "required"
technologies/features list as per checkpoint 5.2. This should make it easy
for developers who have already conformed to WCAG 1.0 at some level, to make
a corresponding claim on WCAG 2.0, and to know which additional requirements
they will have to meet in order to conform to WCAG 2.0 at a higher level.

Received on Wednesday, 7 August 2002 10:13:32 UTC