WCAG 2.0 Comment Submission

Name: Christophe Strobbe
Email: christophe.strobbe@esat.kuleuven.be
Affiliation: DocArch, Katholieke Universiteit Leuven
Document: W2
Item Number: baseline
Part of Item: 
Comment Type: technical
Comment (Including rationale for any proposed change):
Should the baseline also identify the human or natural languages that the content covered by the conformance claim relies upon? 

The rationale for this is twofold.

1. Success criteria 3.1.1 and 3.1.2 require language markup, especially for the benefit of users of speech synthesis and/or braille, but this language markup is of little benefit if the languages are not supported by, for example, the user\'s speech synthesis software.

2. Success criterion 3.1.5 requires supplemental content if text requires a reading ability more advanced than the lower secondary education level, but the algorithms or methods to determine the required reading ability are language-specific. (Similarly, the techniques you use to conform to WCAG depend on the technologies in your baseline.)

Proposed Change:
Consider adding the human languages that the content relies upon to the baseline. (This would imply a distinction between \"baseline technologies\", i.e. the current baseline concept, and \"baseline human languages\".)

Received on Wednesday, 6 December 2006 12:16:33 UTC