Re: WCAG 2.2 acceptance criteria

Katie wrote:
> Audio description is Level AA, does not have a tool, and takes lots of time to test. Is it very valuable? Yes.

Audio description is something added to video, and video generally has a higher production value than creating a page of mostly text, so proportionally doing an audio description (creation or testing) is not that much extra.

And yet is it excluded as a criteria in some regions because it creates an “undue burden”.

That language is explicit in the latest public sector EU regs, so if something is (perceived to be) too difficult, it won’t get done. Also, some websites aiming for a high level of accessibility avoid including video because of the audio description requirement, which is not beneficial for people with cognitive issues.

I don’t think that is a good result.

In a recent project I’m making the case that more video should be included because having different ways of understanding things is beneficial across many audiences, but that involves working around the audio description criteria because they don’t have the budget for that. Or rather, proportionally less video would be included based on the cost of including audio-desc.

We can add any requirement you like based on user-need, but we do also have to make it reasonable for organisations to meet it, otherwise it won’t get used and we will have wasted our time.


> If 2.2 is going to be rail-roaded  to not include COGA SCs, yet again, I have no idea how there can be any respect left for this WG.

That is not the case, and (as said previously) I don’t think this will apply to any of the COGA SCs proposed. Ironically that update was not added due to COGA SCs.

This was added to improve the quality of the SCs at the time of publication rather that exclude anything.

-Alastair

PS. Something I’d like to see in Silver is a mechanism to apply some criteria to different types of organisations. E.g. It is reasonable to apply the audio description criteria to national broadcasters, but allow others to provide alternative content.