Re: Study on Web accessibility in European Countries

Hi,

At 01:20 30/05/2010, Sailesh Panchang wrote:
>James,
>You are right ...the items you list as examples are certainly more 
>restrictive. WCAG2 does not  suggest those practices as being 
>required. The suite of WCAG2 documentation including the 
>'Understanding' and 'Techniques' are good reference points.
>The recently published  draft to Section 508 standards too heavily 
>relies on WCAG 2 and contains identical specs and maybe the 
>Commission can refer to it too.
>The Euro Commission Society should be advised to study these and 
>just reference them. The rest is the Euro Commission Society's prerogative.

I would like to point out that the content of the study "do[es] not 
necessarily reflect the view of the European Commission" (see 
acknowledgements section). Even though the EC commissioned this 
study, this does not imply endorsement of the evaluation methodology 
used in it.
A few years ago, the EC supported the development of a "Unified Web 
Evaluation Methodology" by a consortium of European organisations 
<http://www.wabcluster.org/uwem1_2/> (UWEM), and drafts of this 
methodology were also read by WAI staff members.
Studies such as this (commissioned by the EC) should ideally be based 
on a methodology that has been more thoroughly reviewed. 
Unfortunately, UWEM was based on WCAG 1.0 because WCAG 2.0 was a 
working draft (<http://www.w3.org/TR/2007/WD-WCAG20-20071211/>, the 
stabilisation draft after last call) when work on UWEM ended.
The EC has not expressed interest in funding an update of UWEM to 
WCAG 2.0. However, they have mandated the European standardisation 
organisations CEN, CENELEC and ETSI to develop a standard that 
defines accessibility requirements for public procurement of products 
and services in the ICT domain 
<http://ec.europa.eu/information_society/activities/einclusion/archive/deploy/pubproc/eso-m376/a_documents/m376_en.pdf> 
(Mandate M 376). During phase 1 of the mandate work, some commenters 
pointed out that this should also cover an evaluation methodology. 
Phase 1 of Mandate 376 sort of ended in February last year, and phase 
2 was supposed to start in September 2009 (at the latest), but the 
contract negotiations were still ongoing in March 2010...

Best regards,

Christophe


>Thanks,
>Sailesh Panchang
>Accessibility Services Lead
>Deque Systems Inc
>Reston VA 20191
>Tel 571-344-1765
>
>
>
>--- On Fri, 5/28/10, James Nurthen <james.nurthen@oracle.com> wrote:
>
>From: James Nurthen <james.nurthen@oracle.com>
>Subject: Study on Web accessibility in European Countries
>To: "WCAG" <w3c-wai-gl@w3.org>
>Date: Friday, May 28, 2010, 6:22 PM
>
>
>
>
>A report
>is available from the European Commission's Information Society
>which aims to measure how well a selection of EU Web Sites meet both
>WCAG1 and WCAG2.
>
>Reading this report I am concerned that very specific technical
>criteria are required to be met in order to meet each of the
>guidelines. Certain of these criteria, in my view, are far more
>restrictive than required by WCAG2.
>These criteria are detailed in Annex
>1 .
>
>
>
>Some of the specific criteria where I believe this is overly
>restrictive are:
>
>
>   1.1.1 Non-Text Content
>
>     Decorative content not rendered using background images is a
>failure
>
>
>
>   1.3.1 Info and Relationships
>
>     Layout tables are prohibited - and table which doesn't
>represent data is a failure
>
>
>
>   2.4.1 Bypass Blocks
>
>     Skip Navigation links are the only way specified that a page
>can meet this guideline
>
>
>
>   4.1.1 Parsing
>
>     Specifies that significant validation errors be avoided without
>specifying what significant means.
>
>
>
>
>Would the working group consider responding to this report and
>clarifying how WCAG 2.0 is intended to be used.
>
>
>
>Thanks,
>
>James
>
>
>James Nurthen | Project Lead, Accessibility
>
>Phone: +1 6505066781 | Mobile: +1 4159871918
>
>Oracle Corporate Architecture
>
>500 Oracle Parkway | Redwood City, CA 94065


-- 
Christophe Strobbe
K.U.Leuven - Dept. of Electrical Engineering - SCD
Research Group on Document Architectures
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BELGIUM
tel: +32 16 32 85 51
http://www.docarch.be/
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Received on Monday, 31 May 2010 10:00:03 UTC