FW: Ad conformance

How to handle Advertisements

 

The following was the result of discussions on today's teleconference call.

 

 

The suggestion was that sites be allowed to claim conformance even if
advertisements did not conform as long as 

the advertisements did not block access to the rest of the content.  

 

Ways that ads could block access to the rest of the content included:

 1. causing seizures 

 2. distraction 

 3. flashing screen reader readable text which might grab focus of screen
readers 

 4. pop ups

 5. advertisements which either steal or keep keyboard focus

 6. ads which make a page refresh periodically and thus caused screen
readers to reset.

 

It was commented that all but the seizure part might be okay if it was only
temporary.  That is, it only continued for a short period of time and then
stopped automatically  - or - if it was easy for the user to stop it.   That
is, the behavior only persists for N seconds after the person first enters
the page (where N is two or three seconds or so but probably not as long as
8 or 10).

 

It was also felt that if the user agent could prevent or turn off any of
these behaviors then there would not be a need for the author to do that.
It would still be recommended that the authors not do it, but it wouldn't be
a requirement.

 

The definition of distraction has to be crafted very carefully since static
bright letters might be distracting.   In this case it really means
distraction via movement etc. It was also pointed out that the purpose of
advertisements is to distract.