WAI/WCAG1AAA-Conformance

Dear Editor,

May I make a suggestion concerning the page-conformance descriptions, 
linked to by pages of A, AA, and AAA conformance?

Readers of a conforming page will see the image link and wonder what it means.
Yet, in the linked-to page, there is no brief layman's description of, 
e.g., "conformance level Triple-A of the W3C Web Content Accessibility 
Guidelines 1.0."
You might, for example, have a paragraph along the lines of:
"This standard is an attempt to ensure that Web pages are usable by those 
with disabilities, user-interface restrictions, or who are using unusual 
browsers. Level Triple-A is the most stringent form of the standard."

One might call this an "informal summary" of the standard's purpose.
Specification-speak is fine for those who are so inclined (I made my way 
through the spec for Algol68, after all), but it's neither inviting nor 
accessible to the casual reader.

In fact, I would respectfully assert that the conformance specification is 
(unavoidably) hard for those with limited knowledge of English to 
understand; hence, pages like  <http://www.w3.org/WAI/WCAG1AAA-Conformance> 
are, themselves, not in compliance with Guideline 14.1, for they refer only 
to a complex document, offering no brief, easily-understood summary of what 
conformance means.

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Roddy Erickson	(707) 857-4711	rerickson@pobox.com

Received on Monday, 20 March 2000 22:03:50 UTC