[last call] Choosing Baselines

Technical/substantive issue

The section currently provides no guidance to actually choosing a baseline  
that can in fact be used accessibly.

I propose that the availability of a user agent which meets level-A  
conformance to User Agent Accessibility Guidelines 1.0 for the relevant  
technology and language be a minimum criterion for the selection of a  
baseline.

In this way, selection of a baseline that is not actually accessible  
automatically makes it impossible to claim conformance to the  
accessibility guidelines. This avoids the situation where it is possible  
to construct content that can meet the requirements, but that is not  
actually accessible due to the absence of any means for using the baseline  
set. Otherwise there is a risk that the value of conformance will be  
significantly reduced, since it makes no reliable statement about whether  
the content is in fact accessible to real people.

This seems a reasonable requirement given that UAAG is a W3C  
recommendation, and does not seem onerous for common web technologies.

cheers

Chaals

-- 
   Charles McCathieNevile, Opera Software: Standards Group
   hablo español  -  je parle français  -  jeg lærer norsk
chaals@opera.com         Try Opera 9 ASAP! http://opera.com

Received on Thursday, 22 June 2006 10:25:14 UTC