Re: New proposal for WCAG conformance

At the first glance I like it.
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What I'm missing most now is to add Navigable principle back to it or 
alternatively some of the other principles need to include it more strongly 
than they do now (I prefer to add it). Navigation seems to be nowhere now 
when you read the principles and guidelines. Still it is one of the key 
things in helping users to create a mental model of the page and be able to 
jump to important content, or skip less important things when needed to. It 
helps people who use sequential means to travel through the page and it is 
always in the visual interface if it is done well. If the language offers 
some mark-up for grouping and IDs for easily identifying the parts it helps 
the navigation even more, but those can go to the language level and/or XAG.

Guideline for being able to use different audio, visual, braille etc. 
presentations for these structures then goes under it also.

(I missed why the navigation was taken out, sorry about that.)

Marja

At 12:41 PM 10/9/2003 -0500, Gregg Vanderheiden wrote:

>[NOTE: This is posted today for discussion NEXT week.  Not for this 
>week.  Not sufficient time for people to review. Comments welcome though.]
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>Described here is an alternate way to look at conformance
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>It addresses the following concerns
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>1 - multiple dimensions of conformance
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>2 - match to WCAG 1.0 in structure and measures
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>[BBC] I'd reword #2 to say "compatibility with WCAG 1.0 and other WAI 
>guidelines" 3 - ability to both have minimum and advanced ways to address 
>individual guidelines
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>This proposal assumes:
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>1 - that the 4 guidelines are now principles (Perceivable, Operable, 
>Understandable and Robust)
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>2 - that the old checkpoints are now Guidelines.
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>3 - that the success criteria remain success criteria  (the term 
>checkpoints would be reserved for the checklists so we don't have 
>confusion between the two which is almost certain if we have checklists 
>and checkpoints that are different.
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>Proposed:
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>- The terms CORE and EXTENDED are dropped. (these terms are used 
>differently in other technical specs and didn't quite fit here.  Also they 
>introduced a completely different structure and terminology than WCAG 1.0)
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>- All 20 (or so) guidelines would be listed under the four principles and 
>numbered  1.1, 1.2 etc. (no change from previous drafts)
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>- All success criteria are labeled as Category 1, 2 or 3
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>     Category 1 = success criteria that
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>        a) the author is not told how to present their information,
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>        b) the criteria are reasonably applicable to all websites in general
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>        c) are machine or HHIR testable.
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>    Category 2 = success criteria that
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>       a) are reasonably applicable to all websites in general and
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>       b) are machine or HHIR testable
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>       c) may require the author to present their content in
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>       particular ways to conform.
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>    Category 3 = additional criteria that go beyond Category 1 and 2
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>       that authors may want to consider if they want to make their sites
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>       accessible or more usable to people with all or particular types of
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>       disability.
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>- Some guidelines will have NO Category 1 items under them and are so marked.
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>- The conformance would take the form of the familiar A, AA, and AAA.  The 
>only difference would be that guidelines without category 1 criteria would 
>be listed at the end of each principle and would have a title following them
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>that said, "no Level A criteria for this guideline."
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>- the Categories might be relabeled A, AA and AAA
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>- The guidelines (or an accompanying document) could have a series of 
>checkboxes that allowed the user to view it with the following materials 
>showing or hidden.
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>     - Introduction
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>     - Level A success criteria
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>     - Level AA success criteria
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>     - Level AAA additional criteria
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>     - Benefits
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>     - Examples
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>     - Appendix
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>This would have a couple disadvantages that we can look at and tweak. But, 
>the advantages look like they outweigh the weaknesses.
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>And, it solves most of the problems we have been facing:
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>   - WCAG 2.0 would for the first time look like an evolution of WCAG 1.0
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>   - The familiar A, AA, AAA would be there.
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>   - Most of the WCAG 1.0 will match up with WCAG 2.0 except where the
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>     working group believes that they no long should.
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>   - The guidelines would look more like 1.0 but would be generic.
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>   - Transition would be easier to understand.
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>To see how all this might look, we have posted another reorganization 
>proposal at 
><http://www.w3.org/WAI/GL/2003/10/reorg5.html>http://www.w3.org/WAI/GL/2003/10/reorg5.html. 
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>Note that a number of condensed views of this draft are provided 
>immediately following the list of editors.
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>You can view it with ONLY Level A conformance criteria.
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>Or A plus Double A
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>Or A plus Double A plus Triple A
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>The appendix is shown in all views
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>The Examples and Benefits could be made to appear in different views but 
>only appear in the full view right now.
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>PS if you click on a view then want to get back to the full doc you can 
>hit BACK or click on the THIS VERSION link at the top of  all views.
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>-Gregg and Ben
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