WCAG 2.0 Comment Submission

Item Number: Related Documents
Part of Item: 
Comment Type: TE
Comment (Including rationale for any proposed change): Conformance: Aggregated Content.



If content contains authored units that do not themselves carry any

conformance claims, and those authored units are modified or substituted as a

result of an aggregation process, then the conformance status of those

authored units is unknown at any point in time unless individual assessments

are carried out. Such assessments may be impractical, for example on sites

that collect comments from the public, maintain e-mail archives, etc.



As the guidelines are currently drafted, the conformance of any Web unit

containing such authored units depends in turn on the conformance of those

authored units, which may vary over time. In order to avoid making false

conformance claims, the operator of such a Web site would, presumably, have to

exclude such Web units from the scope of any conformance claim, in accordance

with the scoping provisions of the conformance section. I think this

consequence needs to be clarified and stated explicitly.



Alternatively, the scoping provisions could be modified to allow individual

authored units to be excluded from the ambit of a claim, but in that case it

is by no means clear how the \"authored units\" could be precisely identified

and specified in the claim.
Proposed Change: Clarify that if it is unknown whether an authored unit participating in

aggregation conforms to WCAG 2.0, or which level of conformance is achieved,

then it is likewise unknown what, if any, level of conformance is attained by

Web units in which it appears. Implementors should be advised to exclude Web

units containing such \"unknown\" authored units from the scope of any

conformance claim in accordance with the \"scoping\" provisions of the

conformance section of WCAG 2.0.



Note that by controlling what may appear in authored units participating in

the aggregation process, through technical or other means, it may be possible

to ensure that a given level of conformance is always satisfied. Under these

circumstances (where the conformance of resulting Web units is guaranteed),

conformance claims with respect to such aggregated content may reliably be

made.

Received on Tuesday, 2 May 2006 16:34:51 UTC