RE: W3C Process and WCAG 2.0 Public Working Draft 17/05/07

 
I agree with Jonathan, in that the current draft does not have the wording that I was hoping.

Specifically we want people to look at other specifications until WCAG adequately supports people with Learning Disabilities. That it why it was  important that the words "There is a need for more research and development in this important area." are removed, as this implies that WCAG 2.0 has done it's best under the currently available knowledge. 

People will assume from the current wording , that there are no better options to include people with learning disabilities. Even worse - they may think that other standards are non credible.

It is important to note that some sites WANT to include people with learning disabilities. The very least we should not make it less likely  for them to succeed.


I will try and review the draft over the weekend.
All the best
Lisa


-----Original Message-----
From: "~:'' ありがとうございました。" [mailto:j.chetwynd@btinternet.com] 
Sent: Wednesday, June 13, 2007 12:37 AM
To: Loretta Guarino Reid
Cc: Lisa Seeman; Andy Heath, Axelrod Research and Computing; Andy Heath; Gez Lemon; Roberto Scano; Gian Sampson-Wild; Dr. Andy Judson; Yvette Hoitink; Marc Walraven; Fred Heddell MBE, Inclusion International; Mrs. Zoe Apostolopoulou e-ISOTIS; Andrew Arch; Sofia Celic; Keith Smith, BILD (British Institute of Learning Disabilities); Peter Rainger; Erlend Øverby; William Loughborough; Geert Freyhoff Inclusion Europe; Mencap Accessibility Unit; Antonia Hyde, United Response; Diane Lightfoot, United Response; Jo Kidd, The Skillnet Group; Dan Edney The Skillnet Group; United Response (UR); Liddy Nevile, La Trobe University; Andy Minnion, The Rix Centre; Simon Evans, The Rix Centre; Jim Byrne GAWDS; Jim Byrne GAWDS; Mel Pedley; Caroline Lambie, Mencap Web Communications Manager; Andrew Holman, Inspired Services; Robert Hubbert, Ubisan; John Nissen, Cloudworld Ltd; Roger Hudson; Janine Ness; Zoe Porter, Valuing People; Sue Carmichael, Valuing People; Geoff Stead; David Sloan, Digital Media Access Group; Simon Cramp; Ann Fergusson; Dr. Robin Boast; Neel Shearer, CALL (Communication Aids for Language and Learning) Centre; Paul Brown, The Scottish Disability Team; Jim Ley; TechDis; =?ISO-8859-1?Q? Katarina_M=FChlenbock; _Dart ?=; =?ISO-8859-1?Q? Emmanuelle_Guti=E9rrez_y_Restrepo; _Sidar ?=; =?ISO-8859-1?Q? Emmanuelle_Guti=E9rrez_y_Restrepo; _Sidar ?=; Mats Lundälv Dart; Sari Follansbee; Sally Paveley, Advisory Unit; Gregg Vanderheiden; Michael Cooper; Judy Brewer; public-comments-WCAG20@w3.org; timbl@w3.org; Ian B. Jacobs; Charles McCathieNevile
Subject: Re: W3C Process and WCAG 2.0 Public Working Draft 17/05/07

Re: W3C Process and  WCAG 2.0 Public Working Draft 17/05/07

Why do we need to include people with learning disabilities or low literacy in creating web standards?
One in five people in the UK is functionally illiterate.

to each one of you that remains concerned,

Users need to be involved in the development of standards, including but not limited to WAI standards. This is the structural fault within W3C process that needs to be resolved.

It is not sufficient to rely on the well intentioned and excellent intellectual prowess of developers. They create to suit their own and their corporate needs.

User groups need to include people with low literacy and learning disabilities.
Corporations and developers need to test their products with users, but amazingly in an email today, a director of one of the largest web corporations advised me they do not include users in their development process.

The evidence is that after more than a decade there are no easy to use tools for independently publishing HTML, SVG or other W3C technologies.

I have already written to Ian, Tim, Chris and others to state this case.

regarding WCAG2 in particular:

whilst it is true that I attended the conference calls, I did not agree the outcomes.
we were limited to discussing a paragraph that has subsequently been significantly diluted in intent**.

it can be found as the last paragraph in the introduction here:
  http://www.w3.org/TR/WCAG20/#intro

regards

Jonathan Chetwynd
Accessibility Consultant on Learning Disabilities and the Internet

29 Crimsworth Road
SW8 4RJ

020 7978 1764

http://www.eas-i.co.uk

**or as Joe wrote
"...the ostensibly open process of the W3C actually isn’t open: It’s dominated by multinationals; the opinions of everyone other than invited experts can be and are ignored; the Working Group can claim that “consensus” has been reached even in the face of unresolved internal disagreement; invited-expert status has been refused or revoked; the process is itself inaccessible to people with disabilities, like deaf people; WCAG Working Group chairs have acted like bullies.

The “open” W3C process simply didn’t work. We tried something else."

http://wcagsamurai.org/errata/intro.html

Received on Thursday, 14 June 2007 10:48:19 UTC