RE: Supporting Technology

This is slightly off the direct topic (I should say "orthagonal to" in
today's doublespeak) of supporting vs. host technology but is an important
side point to me:
 
I have a different opinion about technology-specific checklists - I think
there should be checklists for technologies like CSS alone, even though in
themselves a Web site cannot be made fully WCAG compliant by following all
the items that would appear in such a checklist. I can easily imagine the
case in which one developer codes HTML and another codes CSS, and later
somebody puts it together and makes sure everything works. I think the CSS
developer should have access to a CSS-specific checklist so they don't have
to pick and choose the relevant points from an HTML + CSS checklist while
doing their work. Certainly it needs to be very clear that the site cannot
be declared WCAG conformant by following the CSS checklist alone - indeed it
should not be considered conformant by following HTML and CSS checklists
separately. Somebody needs to put the pieces together, using a single
combined HTML + CSS checklist (or whatever combination of host and
supporting technologies is used. Nevertheless having the checklists
available separately is a useful development resource.
 
Perhaps the difference between this view and the one expressed by Gregg
(which is the majority view as far as I know) is a difference between
checklists and techniques. If you see techniques as a developer resource and
checklists as a validation resource, then the situation I just described
doesn't really come up and I don't have as much of a basis for my position.
However, my own work style is that I would use checklists during
development. I have the familiarity with the techniques that I don't need to
refer to them, and would just use checklists as reminders. Certainly this
level of familiarity with the techniques is not widespread but I think we
would hope it would be and should support that work style (among many
others) in the way we prepare our materials.
 
Michael

-----Original Message-----
From: Gregg Vanderheiden [mailto:gv@trace.wisc.edu]
Sent: Friday, December 19, 2003 5:16 PM
To: 'Sailesh Panchang'; w3c-wai-gl@w3.org
Subject: RE: Supporting Technology



Right

 

   In conjunction with techniques we will be developing   "Technology
Specific Checklists".    These checklists will be what people actually use
in practice since they will say specifically what must be done with each
technology to meet the WCAG.    

 

The checklists will be for technologies or sets of technologies that can
meet all of the WCAG 2.0 guidelines.  They will have to allow a person to at
least meet all of the level 1 success criteria.  ( or else they would have
to start out with a statement that in order for content presented with this
technology to meet WCAG 2.0 all content must also be presented in another
technology in a form that did meet minimum WCAG 2.0 --- which of course is
not very encouraging) 

 

 So there would be no CSS checklist.  Only an HTML plus CSS checklist.  Or
an XHTML plus CSS checklist.   Or XHTML + CSS + Scripting checklist. 


Gregg