WCAG 2.0 comments and suggestions

As a practitioner with 10 years+ experience 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 technologies, I find the following
issues in WCAG2 highly problematic:
 
1. 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 accessibility 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 environment, the whole notion of accepting lower standards in,
say, private intranets is absurd as it will prevent people with special
needs from working in these environments.
 
2. 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.
 
3. 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 accessibility 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.

 

 

---- 
Lars Ballieu Christensen 
Rådgiver/Adviser, Sensus ApS 
Tel: +45 48 22 10 03 – GSM: +45 40 32 68 23 
Mail:  <mailto:lbc@sensus.dk> lbc@sensus.dk – Web:  <http://www.sensus.dk/>
www.sensus.dk