Statement of Guideline 4.2 needs work

When we revised the language of Guidelines 4.2 to refer to User Agents 
instead of plug-ins, we only seem to have done so for the first sentence, 
and I find the current statement of the guideline confusing:
    * At least one <http://www.w3.org/WAI/GL/WCAG20/#useragentdef>user 
agent supporting the content conforms to at least the default set of 
conformance requirements of the <http://www.w3.org/TR/UAAG10/>User Agent 
Accessibility Guidelines (UAAG) 1.0 at Level A plus the sets of 
requirements (a) through (i) (below) that apply. If required plug-ins are 
not accessible, an alternative solution is provided that conforms to WCAG 
2.0. If inaccessible plug-ins are available, then a method for obtaining an 
accessible plug-in is provided from the content. [V]
I think the second sentence should either be deleted, or should be changed 
to say "If no such user agent exists, an alternate version of the content 
is provided that conforms to WCAG 2.0." I think we might just delete this, 
though, since I think it is a tautology. It still says to provide a version 
of the content that conforms to this guideline.

I'm not sure whether our aim in the third sentence was to direct the user 
to a suitable user agent if a link refers to content that is not supported 
by the current user agent, or if we really are addressing how to extend the 
functionality of a user agent via plugins. In the former case, we are 
asking the author to make assumptions about what user agent is being used. 
In the latter case, the augmented user agent still needs to satisfy this 
guideline, that is, the user agent plus plug-in must still satisfy UAAG.

So I'd propose the following revision:
    * At least one <http://www.w3.org/WAI/GL/WCAG20/#useragentdef>user 
agent supporting the content conforms to at least the default set of 
conformance requirements of the <http://www.w3.org/TR/UAAG10/>User Agent 
Accessibility Guidelines (UAAG) 1.0 at Level A plus the sets of 
requirements (a) through (i) (below) that apply. If plug-ins are required 
to render the content, then a method for obtaining the plug-ins is provided 
from the content. Note that the user agent augmented by the plug-ins must 
still satisfy this guideline. [V]

Received on Friday, 25 February 2005 02:23:23 UTC