WCAG 2.0 Comment Submission

Name: Lars Ballieu Christensen
Email: lbc@sensus.dk
Affiliation: Sensus ApS - European Accessibility Consultants
Document: W2
Item Number: (none selected)
Part of Item: 
Comment Type: GE
Comment (Including rationale for any proposed change):
As a practitioner with 10 years+ experince in advising site owners and developers on how to develop web sites that are accessible to the widest range of users using the widest range of technilogies, I find the following the following issues in WCAG2 highly problematic:



The introduction of a technology baseline; the concept of a baseline is in my opinion in itself in direct conflict with the idea of creating inclusive solutions; I fear that the baseline will be used widely to formally pass accessbility tests by omitting all potentially tricky technologies from the baseline. In my opinion, the baseline is a mistake that should be removed from the document. If the aim is to promote an inclusive envisonment, the whole notion of accepting lower standards in, say, private intranets is absurd as it will preent people with special needs to work in these environments.



The document is still heavily biased towards the visually impaired. By and large, other groups of people with special needs are in practice omitted from the substance of the guidelines. These include, but are not limited to, the deaf, dyslexic, people with reading difficulties, and the cognitively disabled. The standard remedy of demanding that all non-textual information also be represented as textual information is simply not enough.



The idea of granting triple-A conformance status to a web site if it passes half (randomly selected?) the level 3 success criteria does not make sense. It suggests either that the level 3 success criteria are irrelevant to the general accessibilily or that it is more important to be able to pass the test than to comply with the level 3 success criteria. 

Proposed Change:
1. Omit the concept of a baseline from the document.



2. Accommodate other - and in many cases much larger - user groups than merely the visually disabled. Complement the text alternative requirement with requirements for other alternatives including simplified text and sign language.



3. Decide whether and which of the level 3 success criteria are important. Leave out the unimportant and make the rest mandatory for gaining triple-A conformance status.

Received on Saturday, 27 May 2006 09:43:12 UTC