RE: Does WCAG allow AT to be used to meet the SC?

> In the meantime one COULD argue that AT can be assumed to meet it [1.4.3 Contrast (minimum)].

This is why I characterized my argument as a reductio ad absurdum.  IMHO it is the peak of hypocrisy for the WG to countenance such an assertion.  If a site author put forth such an claim (with regard to their poor contrast site) they would be met with derision.

I will skip over the other stuff an just focus on the most obvious point:  1.4.3 Contrast (minimum) and 1.4.4 Resize text are structured the same and can be mitigated with the same type of assistive technology (screen magnification, which has been available for 20 years) but 1.4.4 has the explicit phrase "without assistive technology".  I contend that this constraint is implicit with all the other SC, but, for the moment, please let us consider this just in the context of 1.4.3.

If your position on this correct (that one can reasonably assume the presence of AT to meet 1.4.3 Contrast (minimum)), I have a couple questions for you that I don't think you can provide good answers for:

Why did we include the contrast provisions?  They were highly contentions and we spent a great of time of them.  All of which would have been obviously moot with the observation that AT solved the problem.

If AT can be used to satisfy SC, why do we not have *any* sufficient technique examples of this?  As you note, 1.4.3 can be particularly constraining for authors, so why in particular do we not have an AT-oriented sufficient technique for this SC?  We have been developing sufficient techniques for a while, so what possible explanation is there for this rather obvious omission other than the WG does not think add-on AT can be relied upon?

Received on Friday, 22 June 2012 11:46:51 UTC