Comment LC-1029

----------------------------------------------------------
Comment 10:

Source: http://www.w3.org/mid/000901c69538$2e394450$f4c9b23a@tkhcomputer
(Issue ID: LC-1029)

Baseline - From reading the Baseline documents, it appears that if a
baseline technology does not have particular functionality (for example, the
ability to navigate using only the keyboard), then the site can still be
compliant with WCAG2 (but obviously not accessible). This acts as a
disincentive for big corporations to develop accessibility features.
Developers want things to be easy - it's a lot easier to click "Print to
PDF" in a Word document than it is to tag a PDF. So what is to stop Adobe
(sorry Loretta!) superceding their PDF technology with a new "SDF"
technology that has no accessibility features?  In that case it would be a
lot easier for a person to create a WCAG2 compliant SDF document than it
would be to create a WCAG2 compliant PDF document. In another example, if
someone had CSS in their baseline then it would be WCAG2 compliant to use
CSS markup to highlight a specific word without having an HTML alternative,
and which would not be able to be interpreted by a screen reader

Proposed Change:

Remove the baseline theory, or allow only UAAG compliant programs in
baseline. If I have misinterpreted the baseline theory, then the WG needs to
develop a document to be used in conjunction with WCAG2 that lists what
baseline technologies must be able to do (similar to UAAG)

----------------------------
Response from Working Group:
----------------------------

The conformance section has been completely rewritten, and the term
"baseline" has been replaced by "accessibility-supported Web technologies".

If a technology doesn't have AT support then you can't use that technology
to meet WCAG according to our conformance requirements. So the problem you
cite would be covered.

Determining whether a technology is accessible-supported is based on the
availability and support for that technology in users' user agent and AT.
The purpose is to ensure that content can be accessed with the user's AT.

NOTE: The technologies referred to are not user agent technologies. They are
the technologies used to build the page (like HTML, CSS etc.)
----------------------------
Response from GSW:
----------------------------
Thank you for addressing my comment.
----------------------------------------------------------

Received on Sunday, 24 June 2007 13:31:26 UTC