RE: Is it 2 or 3 years that WCAG will be updated? - I thought it was approx. 3

From: Jonathan Avila [mailto:jon.avila@ssbbartgroup.com]
Sent: Tuesday, November 8, 2016 3:30 PM

Regarding Katie’s statement – I have seen what she describes.  While some customers are eager to know what is best practices, when it comes to prioritizing and actually addressing issues many organizations are only willing to do what is required.
[Jason] The extent to which this is true in different countries and contexts is an interesting matter that may be elucidated if appropriate questions are asked during the Silver survey process.
It is also relevant to note that despite approximately twenty years of work to improve Web accessibility, successive studies have shown overwhelmingly that only a small proportion of Web sites and Web applications meet accessibility standards. For this to change, Web application developers need to be educated in accessible design, and the organizations that employ them need to prioritize accessibility to a much greater extent and on a much larger scale than has occurred so far. If you think this cannot realistically happen without further regulatory intervention around the world (and it’s a very plausible view to hold), then the role of WCAG in policy and legal contexts will need to expand further rather than diminish.
The organizations that employ participants in this working group are exceptional in that they prioritize accessibility to a much greater extent than appears to be the norm, or, in the case of consulting firms and disability-related organizations, their mission is to make the Web more accessible and thereby to promote genuine equality for people with disabilities.
However, I tend to agree with Katie that the regulatory audience is fundamental to WCAG, and that if we don’t satisfy the needs of policy creators as an essential audience, then the benefits won’t be sufficiently large to justify the investment of work required to revise the specification.
I also note that the issue of how frequently WCAG should be updated will inevitably be re-evaluated at the end of the next charter period (we are not bound by any prospective statements in the currently proposed charter that extend beyond it), and that any further decisions about frequency of updates should be postponed until then.


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