Re: Errata and future versions

Yes, I think it is important to work on the errata for WCAG 1.0, and 
publish a lightly revised version of that spec.

One of the reasons that Fundación Sidar is participating in the 
EuroAccessibility Consortium is the hope that it will provide some 
people to do the work which such a revision implies. The diversion 
effect Joe warned of is important to take into account, but so is the 
fact that real world developers and accessibility practictioners 
currently have to work with WCAG 1.0, and consequently end up doing a 
lot of their own interpretation.

I think that it is worth changing the version - producing a WCAG 1.1 
that has the same structure, doesn't change checkpoint text, 
conformance schemes, etc, except to incorporate errata and similar 
things (updated interpretations of "until user agents ..." checkpoints 
for example).

It is also important to work on the techniques for WCAG 1.0 - providing 
(and getting agreement from the working group on) examples of how to 
meet a checkpoint, and further discussion. Naturally enough the WCAG 
group is working in this area, and I would suggest that anyone 
interested in this kind of work look into it further...

with regard to revising WCAG 1.0 I suspect that an important ingredient 
is a number of people prepared to take on the work - and to join the 
WCAG working group to do so.

cheers

Chaals

On Saturday, Jun 28, 2003, at 02:37 Europe/Zurich, Kynn Bartlett wrote:

> On Friday, June 27, 2003, at 02:48  PM, Joe Clark wrote:
>> So: What are we gonna do here?
>>
>> 1. Divert mindshare and time to produce a WCAG 1.0 errata document, 
>> [...]
>> 2. Keep working on WCAG 2.0 such that 2.0 includes all the fixes for 
>> the errata of 1.0.
>
> Technically there is already an errata for WCAG 1.0, but I think that
> a cohesive effort needs to be made in order to fold those problems,
> and other issues, back into the original WCAG 1.0 and issue not an
> errata, but a "second edition."
> [snip]
> This is the approach that should be taken with WCAG 1.0, in preparation
> for WCAG 2.0 -- I think that by explicitly identifying and solving
> the small changes in WCAG 1.0, it will actually help to produce a
> cleaner, tighter, and more usable WCAG 2.0 eventually, somewhere
> down the road.
>
> As Tina said, we're going to be stuck with WCAG 1.0 for a while,
> and it's important that the W3C be seen as properly managing that
> document throughout its lifetime.  (This also involves giving
> definitive, but date-specific, information on the "until user
> agent" clauses in WCAG 1.0.)
>
--
Charles McCathieNevile                          Fundación Sidar
charles@sidar.org                                http://www.sidar.org

Received on Sunday, 29 June 2003 03:21:37 UTC