#LC-464 Proposed Resolution

#LC-464            

Jason White      5/1/2006            

W2       

Conformance    

Aggregated Content      

TE        


Comment


"If content contains authored units that do not themselves carry any
conformance claims, and those authored units are modified or substituted as
a result of an aggregation process, then the conformance status of those
authored units is unknown at any point in time unless individual assessments
are carried out. Such assessments may be impractical, for example on sites
that collect comments from the public, maintain e-mail archives, etc.

 

    As the guidelines are currently drafted, the conformance of any Web unit
containing such authored units depends in turn on the conformance of those
authored units, which may vary over time. In order to avoid making false
conformance claims, the operator of such a Web site would, presumably, have
to exclude such Web units from the scope of any conformance claim, in
accordance with the scoping provisions of the conformance section. I think
this consequence needs to be clarified and stated explicitly.

 

     Alternatively, the scoping provisions could be modified to allow
individual authored units to be excluded from the ambit of a claim, but in
that case it is by no means clear how the "authored units" could be
precisely identified and specified in the claim.


Proposed Change 


            "Clarify that if it is unknown whether an authored unit
participating in aggregation conforms to WCAG 2.0, or which level of
conformance is achieved, then it is likewise unknown what, if any, level of
conformance is attained by Web units in which it appears. Implementors
should be advised to exclude Web units containing such "unknown" authored
units from the scope of any conformance claim in accordance with the
"scoping" provisions of the conformance section of WCAG 2.0.

 

  Note that by controlling what may appear in authored units participating
in  the aggregation process, through technical or other means, it may be
possible to ensure that a given level of conformance is always satisfied.
Under these circumstances (where the conformance of resulting Web units is
guaranteed), conformance claims with respect to such aggregated content may
reliably be made."  


Proposed Resolution from Team A 


Not Accepted.

This comment is based on supposition that if content include parts that have
unknown accessibility the author should not be responsible.   This is not
the position of the Working Group.   The page either conforms or doesn't.
The fact that parts change means the authors need to ensure that changing
parts are accessible after they change if they want to claim the web unit is
accessible (not that they could scope them out and still claim access).
The guidelines are written to reflect this, and that is the intent of the
Working Group.   No change to document