Conformance section of the WCAG2

Reading through

http://www.w3.org/TR/WCAG20/intro.html#conformance

leaves me very uneasy about what the levels are meant to be.  "In WCAG 1.0, 
each checkpoint is assigned a "priority" according to its impact on 
accessibility for users. Thus Priority 3 checkpoints appear to be less 
important than Priority 1 checkpoints. The Working Group now believes that 
all success criteria of WCAG 2.0 are essential for some people. Thus, the 
system of checkpoints and priorities used in WCAG 1.0 has been replaced by 
success criteria grouped under Levels 1, 2, and 3 as described above."

If all success criteria of WCAG 2.0 are essential, then why is level 3 
phrased as
"   1.   Achieve additional accessibility enhancements for people with 
disabilities.
      2.   Are not applicable to all Web resources."

"Additional accessibility enhancements" does not sound like an essential 
criteria and anyone who feels that the criteria is too hard can just claim 
"not applicable to this resource".

In addition, the fact that there are three levels will look like the three 
priority levels of WCAG 1 and will create the impression that level 1 WCAG 
2.0 is the same as priority 1 WCAG 1.0.    Creating levels apparently based 
on "this shouldn't change the look of your document" seems like a step in 
the wrong direction to me.

Lynn Alford - Web Developer James Cook University



Lynn Alford                             Tel     (07) 47 81 6256
ITR                                             Email:  imla@jcu.edu.au
JCU QLD 4811 Australia                  ICQ: 64096907
MSN: nicarra60@hotmail.com              Y!: nicarra60

Received on Wednesday, 14 December 2005 06:29:17 UTC