- From: Charles McCathieNevile <chaals@opera.com>
- Date: Thu, 22 Jun 2006 06:25:07 -0400
- To: "WCAG 2 comments" <public-comments-wcag20@w3.org>
Structural/substantive issue The current levels system for success criteria seems insufficiently described, and inappropriate to the needs of developers. WCAG 20 acknowledges that most criteria are essential in order for some people to be able to use some types of web content. It then attempts to describe the amount of benefit to usersin general (the difference between level 1 and level 2) and the apparent applicability of a technique to the web. It appears that the goal is to provide a "reasonable" implementation planning tool. Both of these things are in fact situation-dependent. In some cases, it will be easy, in others critical, to apply approaches whose level suggests that they are not so important or easy in the general case. Thus, while providing a signed equivalent of content is extremely important in a number of cases, and is occasionally trivially easy (in others it is quite expensive), it is perfectly possible that all web content claiming triple-A conformance is without signed content. Similarly, there is no clear technical justification for different requirement levels for captioning depending on whether content is "live"/"real-time", or pre-recorded. The accesibility result for users who rely on captions is exactly the same in both cases. Again, this may be easy to implement in some cases, and is very expensive in others, and its relative importance will be variable. In order to assist developers, and policy makers, WCAG should describe the imact on users of a particular success criterion being met or not. This enables prioritisation based on the actual situation, rather than a generalised model situation which will often be an inaccurate representation of the case at hand. I propose that either: 1. the levels be removed, and the information in the currently informative "Understanding WCAG" about who benefits be moved to the normtive recommendation. Or, as an alternative 2. the specification revert to the WCAG 1.0 priority scheme, rather than with the "apparent ease of implementation" clouding the question of their relevance to users. 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 10:28:32 UTC