Request for review: Working Draft of Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 2.0

Dear WAI Interest Group Participants,

A new Working Draft of the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 2.0
(WCAG 2.0) as well as three supporting documents were published
30 July 2004 and are available for your review.  W3C Working Drafts
provide opportunities for public comment during the development of a
specification.  Please send comments to the public comments mailing
list by 10 September 2004:
        public-comments-wcag20@w3.org

WCAG 2.0 addresses accessibility of Web content for people with
disabilities. It will apply to a wider range of Web technologies than
WCAG 1.0 and is intended to be understandable to a wider audience.

Since the previous public Working Draft of WCAG 2.0, published on 11
March 2004, the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines Working Group
(WCAG WG), chaired by Gregg Vanderheiden, has incorporated many
of the comments received and further developed the guidelines and
success criteria in WCAG 2.0.  Additionally, with this draft, the WCAG WG
provides a first glimpse of the connections between design principles,
testable criteria, and technology-specific examples and techniques. Four
documents were published on 30 July 2004: WCAG 2.0, Gateway to
Techniques for WCAG 2.0, HTML Techniques for WCAG 2.0, and CSS
Techniques for WCAG 2.0.

The WCAG WG invites you to comment on the latest Working Drafts,
available at:
   - Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 2.0
     <http://www.w3.org/TR/2004/WD-WCAG20-20040730/>
   - Gateway to Techniques for WCAG 2.0
     <http://www.w3.org/TR/2004/WD-WCAG20-GATEWAY-20040730/>
   - HTML Techniques for WCAG 2.0
     <http://www.w3.org/TR/2004/WD-WCAG20-HTML-TECHS-20040730/>
   - CSS Techniques for WCAG 2.0
     <http://www.w3.org/TR/2004/WD-WCAG20-CSS-TECHS-20040730/>

The Working Group is interested in discussion of the following
questions.

1.  In general, is this WCAG 2.0 Working Draft easy to understand?
      Please identify phrases that are difficult to understand.
      Please suggest wording for the Working Group to consider.

2.  In this Working Draft, links to the Gateway are only provided
      for Guideline 1.1. Our goal is to show the different types of
      information we are developing and one possible path through
      that information.  We are interested in feedback about the link
      text, the structure and content of the Gateway to Techniques,
      and the ease of navigating between the documents.  What
      additional navigation mechanisms are needed?  What is
      confusing? How do the techniques clarify the success criteria?

3. This Working Draft divides success criteria into 3 Levels (Level 1,
      Level 2, Level 3).  Levels are defined differently than the three
      priorities in WCAG 1.0. If you are familiar with WCAG 1.0, do you
      support this change?

      However, as with WCAG 1.0, "A," "AA," and "AAA" indicate the three
      levels of conformance to WCAG 2.0. Will reusing A/AA/AAA make it
      easier to transition from WCAG 1.0 to 2.0 or more difficult to make
      the transition?

4.  Expressing the scope of  a conformance claim is a tricky issue for
      sites that integrate content from multiple sources (aggregators) as
      well as web applications.  Please describe the process you use to
      document your site's conformance to WCAG 1.0. Do you make
      detailed information about your conformance claim available on
      your site? For WCAG 2.0, how likely will you be to make detailed
      conformance information available in a form that is intended (a) to
      be read by people using the site, (b) to be interpreted by software
      without human intervention (e.g., metadata), or (c) both?

Please send your comments by 10 September 2004 to:
     public-comments-wcag20@w3.org
The archive for that mailing list is available at:
    <http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-comments-wcag20/>

When sending comments, please:
     - State the issue as clearly and simply as possible.
     - Provide links to specific examples or references.
     - If possible, suggest solutions.
     - Remember that the Working Group welcomes volunteers
       to help with the work.

When waiting for responses to comments:
     - Track your issue in the open issues list
<http://trace.wisc.edu/bugzilla_wcag/condensedreports/wcag2_issues.php>
     - Follow up on the mailing list if you don't find your issue in the
       open issues list.

Please let us know if you have any questions. Many thanks in advance for
your comments. Additional information on the Working Group is available
at:
   <http://www.w3.org/WAI/GL/>

Note:
Our target is for WCAG 2.0 to become a W3C Recommendation in the first
quarter of 2005. Until then, WCAG 1.0 will continue to be the current
and stable document to use. If your site currently conforms to WCAG 1.0,
be assured that conformance to WCAG 2.0 will not require a complete
redesign of your site but it will likely require some tweaks.

Note:
This message may be circulated to other lists, avoiding cross-postings
where possible.

Wendy Chisholm
W3C Team Contact for the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines Working
Group and
Judy Brewer
Director, Web Accessibility Initiative, W3C

-- 
wendy a chisholm
world wide web consortium
web accessibility initiative
http://www.w3.org/WAI/
/--

Received on Monday, 9 August 2004 23:55:33 UTC