Call for Review: Last Call Working Draft of Authoring Tool Accessibility Guidelines 2.0

Dear WAI Interest Group Participants:

The Authoring Tool Accessibility Guidelines 2.0 (ATAG 2.0) has reached Last 
Call Working Draft status. It will be under review until 18 January 2005. 
Information on the document and how to comment follows. The document is 
available at:
         <http://www.w3.org/TR/2004/WD-ATAG20-20041122/>http://www.w3.org/TR/2004/WD-ATAG20-20041122/

WHAT IS ATAG 2.0?

Authoring Tool Accessibility Guidelines 2.0 (ATAG 2.0) is part of a series 
of accessibility guidelines published by the W3C Web Accessibility 
Initiative (WAI). The other guidelines in this series include the Web 
Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) and the User Agent Accessibility 
Guidelines (UAAG).

ATAG 2.0 provides guidelines for designing authoring tools that lower 
barriers to Web accessibility for people with disabilities. An authoring 
tool that conforms to these guidelines will promote accessibility by 
providing an accessible authoring interface to authors with disabilities, 
as well as enabling, supporting, and promoting the production of accessible 
Web content by all authors.

WHAT DOES "LAST CALL" MEAN?

A Last Call Working Draft announcement means that the Working Group 
believes that it has satisfied its technical requirements and dependencies 
with other W3C Working Groups. The Working Group believes that the Working 
Draft has stabilized. It seeks a broad review of ATAG 2.0 during this 
period, and expects to request advancement to Candidate Recommendation 
(where the focus of review will be on implementation testing) after this 
Last Call review is completed. More information on the W3C Process is 
available at:
         http://www.w3.org/Consortium/Process/

HOW CAN I COMMENT?

Please send comments to the following address by 18 January 2004. Note that 
this is an extension from the deadline for comments which is listed in the 
document:
         <mailto:w3c-wai-au@w3.org>w3c-wai-au@w3.<mailto:w3c-wai-au@w3.org>org
A public record of comments is available at:
         <http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/w3c-wai-au>http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/w3c-wai-<http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/w3c-wai-au>au/
Review and send comments on the following Last Call Working Draft:
         <http://www.w3.org/TR/2004/WD-ATAG20-20041122/>http://www.w3.org/TR/2004/WD-ATAG20-20041122/
You may find the following overview helpful for context:
         http://www.w3.org/WAI/intro/atag
In addition, an updated Working Draft of a supporting document, 
Implementation Techniques for ATAG 2.0, is available for review, though it 
is not in Last Call status:
         http://www.w3.org/TR/2004/WD-ATAG20-TECHS-20041122/

The Working Group is particularly interested in discussion of the following 
questions:

   1. Does this document include the features that you think are necessary 
in an authoring tool that is accessible and that supports authoring of 
accessible content? Are the priorities of the checkpoints appropriate?

   2. Is this document easier to understand than ATAG 1.0, and can it be 
applied to a wider range of authoring tools than ATAG 1.0?
         ( http://www.w3.org/TR/ATAG10 )

   3. Has the ATAG 2.0 Working Draft reached the right balance between 
giving developers freedom to work creatively to meet the guidelines, while 
at the same time developing objective success criteria for each checkpoint?

   4. This document references another accessibility standard, ISO 16071, 
which provides guidelines for software and operating system accessibility. 
Unlike W3C, ISO charges a fee for its documents. In this case, the document 
costs 110 Swiss francs, or about US$90. Is it reasonable to reference this 
document?

   5. Authoring tool makers who claim conformance to ATAG must declare in 
their conformance statement whether their output conforms to WCAG 1.0 
and/or WCAG 2.0. Is this a useful approach? Is this explained adequately in 
the document?

WHAT CHANGES WERE MADE SINCE THE LAST WORKING DRAFT?

Since the last Working Draft of ATAG 2.0, the following changes have been 
made:

   - References to specific sections of the ISO 16071 software 
accessibility guidelines have been added.
   - Old Checkpoints 2.1, 2.2 and 2.3 have been merged into a New 
Checkpoint 2.1.
   - Checkpoint 3.4 (care reusing generated alternate content) has been 
raised to Priority 1.
   - Checkpoint 3.8 (features related to accessibility) has been lowered to 
Priority 3.
   - New Checkpoint 3.9 (Provide a tutorial on the process of accessible 
authoring) has been added.
   - Checkpoint 4.1 has been reworded and moved to New Checkpoint 4.3.
   - Wording of checkpoints have been modified to be more easily testable.
   - Checkpoint success criteria, conformance level information, and 
glossary terms are much more detailed.

NOTE: This message may be circulated to other lists, but please be careful 
to avoid cross-postings.

Thank you in advance for your review.

Regards,

Matt May, Team Contact for the Authoring Tool Accessibility Guidelines 
Working Group
Judy Brewer, Director, Web Accessibility Initiative, W3C


-- 
Judy Brewer    +1.617.258.9741    http://www.w3.org/WAI
Director, Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI), World Wide Web Consortium (W3C)
MIT/CSAIL Building 32-G530
32 Vassar Street
Cambridge, MA,  02139,  USA

Received on Tuesday, 7 December 2004 05:24:38 UTC