Comments on 21 May 2009 ATAG 2.0 WD

Dear AUWG Participants,

Thank you for the opportunity to comment. The draft is looking good. 
Some comments follow, mostly editorial. Sorry for brevity and lack of 
suggestions; please let me know if clarifications needed.

1. The abstract needs clarification. The non-parallel structure makes 
it sound as though ATAG 2.0 addresses accessibility of the tool, and 
only as an incidental consequence supports the production of 
accessible Web content. Needs to strongly and clearly state up front 
that this document addresses two separate but important aspects of 
accessibility and authoring tools.

2. Introduction, 2nd bullet, this rationale is limited. Point of ATAG 
is not just because of an assumption that many authors will not be 
familiar with end user needs, but because of the importance of 
increased efficiency of support for production of accessible content. 
I'm not suggesting that wording exactly but think that you need to 
make that theme more evident here in the introduction.

3. Notes on the Definition (of authoring tools), first sub-bullet: I 
think that the use of '"conventional" web page authoring tools' may 
"date" the document; I believe that the majority of content on the 
Web is already not produced by these so-called "conventional" tools, 
and this will be even more the case in the future. No modifier is needed here.

4. Notes on Def, cont, bullet 2: It is unclear how this note relates 
to situations where people have limited authoring permissions for one 
or more areas or aspects of a Web page; e.g. the note seems to carry 
the assumption that author permission is binary.

5. Notes on Def, cont, bullet 3: How stable is this definition of 
"live content authoring tools"? If it is stable, please add it to the 
glossary. The conformance exclusion that you propose here seems 
major, and should be addressed within the conformance section; 
perhaps I am missing it there? The parenthetical explanation left me 
thinking through various live archiving modes of authoring and 
wondering if in fact none of Part B should apply, and the note about 
"many guidelines in Part B may still usefully apply"

6. Relationship to WCAG 2.0, benchmarks: Perhaps benchmarks needs a 
definition? Not immediately clear what you mean by benchmarks based 
on the available context.

7. Same paragraph as #6, and multiple places in the document, is this 
usage of "outputted" grammatical?

8. Understanding levels of conformance, first list item, "access 
issues for pwd" -- shouldn't this (and in multiple places) be 
"accessibility issues"? (And immediately after "the issue be 
specific" -- word missing?)

9. Guideline A.3.3 "photosensitive epilepsy". Please use the more 
generic term, "photosensitive seizure disorder" instead of 
photosensitive epilepsy, so that it is also inclusive of 
non-epileptiform stimuli-sensitive disorders, for instance 
photomyoclonus, paroxysmal non-kinesigenic dyskinesia, etc.  I 
believe that this correction has been requested previously.

10. Guideline A4.2 rationale: The logic of this rationale seems odd; 
it seems to imply that undocumented features are intuitively 
designed, which is probably rarely the case.

11. Success criteria A.4.2.2 "Tutorials are provided for some of the 
features" seems to need more precise quantification to be testable.

12. Success criteria B.1.1.2 (Author choice...) If I did not already 
think that I knew what this meant, due to having mulled over it a 
fair amount in the past, I am not sure that I would understand what 
it means from how it is phrased here. I suggest further rephrasing.

13. Success criteria B.1.2.1. (Preserves info...) Ditto my comment in 
#12, but slightly more so.

14. B.1.2.3.(a) "that it can detect is not accessibility" suggested 
replacement "that it can determine not to be accessible"

15. B.2.1.1., B.2.1.2, B.2.1.3.: "then automatic prompts are also 
included for any..." the use of "included" here seems unclear. 
Instead, perhaps "available" or "turned on"?

16. B.2.3.1., 2.3.2., 2.3.3. "repair assistance is provided" -- is 
there a clear expectation of what "provided" means here?

17. Conformance: Disclaimer: AUWG acronym is AUWG not WAI-AUWG, 
please remove "WAI" here (two instances)


--
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-G526
32 Vassar Street
Cambridge, MA,  02139,  USA

Received on Monday, 15 June 2009 09:43:02 UTC