Fwd: Inclusion Europe contribution to WCAG revision

Feedback from Inclusion Europe
All the best

Lisa 
============ Forwarded message ============
>From : Geert Freyhoff<geert@oneworld.expert>
To : <lisa.seeman@zoho.com>
Date : Fri, 31 Mar 2017 13:36:38 +0300
Subject : Inclusion Europe contribution to WCAG revision
============ Forwarded message ============

Dear Ms. Seeman,


Inclusion Europe is the European Association of People with Intellectual Disabilities and their Families. You can find more information on us at www.inclusion-europe.org. As its former Executive Director, I am working as an external expert for this association.


As representative organisation of people with intellectual disabilities, we have been concerned for a long time about the lack of accessibility of internet content for people with intellectual disabilities and have raised this concern already at previous revisions of the WCAG. It is rather obvious that the present WCAG tends to reduce rather than enhance internet accessibility for people with intellectual disabilities by pursuing the concept of texts that are accessible for everyone.


However, a recent explorative study has shown that quite a number of public bodies in Europe and worldwide have taken the way of providing intellectually accessible content and exceeding the WCAG specification. An excellent example is that of the German National Parliament at www.bundestag.de where a link to intellectually accessible content is provided at the top of the main landing page by the European Easy-to-Read Logo.


Pursuing this approach, Inclusion Europe has developed a number of proposals for the new version of the WCAG. We have tried to submit our contributions in the proposed spaces. Due to the complexity of the consultation process and due to the present time limitations, however, we would like to ask you as Cognitive and Learning Disabilities Accessibility Task Force to support our proposals and to help making sure that they are channelled in the correct way into the discussions.


Our proposals are attached as PDF and also pasted below. Please do not hesitate to contact us if you should have any comments or requests.


Yours sincerely,


Geert Freyhoff



Success Criterion 3.1.X Plain Language Summary of site 

(Level A) When a website requires for most of its pages a reading ability more advanced than the primary education level, a summary page that does not require reading ability more advanced than the primary education level, is available as supplemental content. This Plain Language Summary page includes:
  Information about the purpose of the site
 
 Summary explanations of and links to the 5 most used pages on the site
 
 Contact information 
 
 The summary page is clearly identified by a non-verbal icon, such as the Easy-to-Read Logo at www.easy-to-read.eu 
 
  Success Criterion 2.4.X Navigation to plain language summary
 (Level A)
 The link to a Plain Language Summary page of a site is provided in the upper part of the entry page of a site through a non-verbal icon, such as the Easy-to-Read Logo at www.easy-to-read.eu 
 Success Criterion 3.1.X Plain language identification
 (Level A)
 If a site contains any pages or summaries in plain language, each plain language passage in the content can be programmatically determined except for proper names, technical terms, words of indeterminate language, and words or phrases that have become part of the vernacular of the immediately surrounding text.
 Explanation
 For this purpose, Inclusion Europe has requested the ISO 3166 Maintenance Agency to consider reserving the code “EL” for Easy Language. EL is currently not assigned by the Agency. In combination with any language code of ISO639, texts could be marked up like “en-EL”, “de-EL” or “fr-EL” in any existing language.
 Users who need plain language versions of texts then could easily access only easy-to- read web pages in their search results. Inclusion Europe has indeed also considered other possibilities to achieve this desired result. However, they would always need specific solutions and coding and not be a mainstream solution. What is needed is a qualifyer for the ISO639 language codes that identifies a specific variety of these languages, in parallel to the -UK or -US code of ISO3166.
 Success Criterion 3.1.X Plain Language Summary of main pages

(Level AAA) When the 10 mostly used pages of a website require a reading ability more advanced than the primary education level, alternative content is provided that does not require reading ability more advanced than the primary education level. This content is clearly identified by a non-verbal icon, such as the Easy-to-Read Logo at www.easy-to-read.eu 











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