- From: Loretta Guarino Reid <lorettaguarino@google.com>
- Date: Thu, 17 May 2007 16:24:50 -0700
- To: "P.J. Gardner" <pjg@gidi.biz>
- Cc: public-comments-WCAG20@w3.org
Dear P.J. Gardner , Thank you for your comments on the 2006 Last Call Working Draft of the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 2.0 (WCAG 2.0 http://www.w3.org/TR/2006/WD-WCAG20-20060427/). We appreciate the interest that you have taken in these guidelines. We apologize for the delay in getting back to you. We received many constructive comments, and sometimes addressing one issue would cause us to revise wording covered by an earlier issue. We therefore waited until all comments had been addressed before responding to commenters. This message contains the comments you submitted and the resolutions to your comments. Each comment includes a link to the archived copy of your original comment on http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-comments-wcag20/, and may also include links to the relevant changes in the updated WCAG 2.0 Public Working Draft at http://www.w3.org/TR/2007/WD-WCAG20-20070517/. PLEASE REVIEW the decisions for the following comments and reply to us by 7 June at public-comments-WCAG20@w3.org to say whether you are satisfied with the decision taken. Note that this list is publicly archived. We also welcome your comments on the rest of the updated WCAG 2.0 Public Working Draft by 29 June 2007. We have revised the guidelines and the accompanying documents substantially. A detailed summary of issues, revisions, and rationales for changes is at http://www.w3.org/WAI/GL/2007/05/change-summary.html . Please see http://www.w3.org/WAI/ for more information about the current review. Thank you, Loretta Guarino Reid, WCAG WG Co-Chair Gregg Vanderheiden, WCAG WG Co-Chair Michael Cooper, WCAG WG Staff Contact On behalf of the WCAG Working Group ---------------------------------------------------------- Comment 1: Source: http://www.w3.org/mid/002801c6964d$479bd140$6401a8c0@D2K2GT91 (Issue ID: LC-1312)WAI WCAG 2.0 Working Group: In an e-mail dated 26 May 2006, called "Extending Deadline on WCAG 2.0 Last Call Review", Judy Brewer said: "I encourage you to read the guidelines while they are in Last Call Working Draft; evaluate them against your own needs and expectations; then share with the Working Group your comments on what you think needs to change in the document." I want to add my voice to the chorus of people responding to the Last Call Working Draft. I already participated as one of the chief authors in a subcommittee of the AccessAbility SIG of the Society for Technical Communication that submitted a response earlier today (http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-comments-wcag20/2006Jun/), but I also wanted to add some personal notes as a Web Accessibility advocate and an independent accessible web designer. I am founder of Boston-IA, a networking organization for web developers, web authors, and other internet professionals to teach them about accessibility and advocate to make the web a more accessible place. I am program director to bring Knowbility's Accessible Internet Rally (AIR) program to Boston in 2007 to teach individual web developers how to build accessible web sites for non-profit organizations. I am a web accessibility consultant, and I build accessible web sites for small (very small) businesses and non-profit organizations with small budgets. I am a career technical communications professional, I consult with greater Boston businesses in web design and information architecture, and I am a member of the STC AccessAbility SIG. I have a graduate certificate in Accessible Web Design from Northeastern University. I know how to build an accessible web site, and I understand the new technologies that we will be struggling with over the next few years. But I think the new WCAG will not help me advocate for accessibility, assess web sites for accessibility, train people in accessibility, or teach me, any more than I learned from WCAG 1.0, how to build accessible web sites or how to consult with the companies who ask me to help them meet accessibility standards. I think that much of the emphasis of the latest draft of the WCAG 2.0 is focused on the web development efforts of very large corporations and on the applications that are being developed under the latest technologies. I want to focus again on the people in the trenches who often perform the work of accessibility on their own. While the attention of larger organizations may be focused on accessibility compliance (conformance in WCAG 2.0 language) because of increasing business pressures, the focus of the small accessible web developer is on accessibility adherence. Many of us already want to make web sites accessible, and we need help spreading the word to fellow standards-based coders. Independents are looking to the Web Accessibility Initiative and the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines for guidance, but our needs as developers are being lost in the shuffle with the new document. This surprises me, given the large number of members of the International Webmaster Association/Help Writers Guild (of which I am also a member) in the Working Group. The documents are so cumbersome, and the problems are so firmly entrenched in the current approach, that my comments about individual items in the basic WCAG 2.0 document will be hard to communicate quickly, although I will try to address them in separate e-mails about the individual documents that support the rather slim WCAG 2.0 (which is really just a table of contents)--one at a time. But the basic approach is flawed, and we cannot make the documents more usable for the independent web developer without a major redesign. Please keep in mind the solo web developer, the independent web accessibility consultant, the people in small web design firms, and in a non-profit organizations or educational institutions that may want to meet accessibility standards but have no budget to undertake months-long accessibility initiatives. This group needs very basic guidance about how to build accessible web sites, not guidance on how to comply or how to establish baseline statements. We need support to keep convincing people that web accessibility is worth undertaking, even without a big budget or a huge staff. Please help us make the World Wide Web more accessible than it is today. Best Regards, P.J. ............................................. P.J. Gardner Web Accessibility Consultant Gardner Information Design, Inc. (www.gidi.biz) Boston-IA (www.boston-ia.org) AIR-Boston (www.knowbility.org/air-boston) ............................................. ---------------------------- Response from Working Group: ----------------------------It is indeed hard to make a technical reference and a practical user guide in the same doc. Also one for advance technologies that are now appearing on the web and one that works for the bulk of the basic bread and butter web developers. In the new draft, we have tried to make it much easier to read and understand. We also created a Quick Reference doc that pulls together what developers need most (the basic requirements and the practical techniques for meeting them). Some other things we have done include: Addressing users with different expertise levels - Tried to create language that is simpler to understand but also includes the technical background for those who want to delve into the technical underpinnings. Testability - tightening up testability, identifying tools for key hard to measure areas, and having tests for all documented techniques cited as sufficient Easier language to understand - Writing simpler guidelines - Removing as many technical terms (jargon) as possible replacing them with plainer language or, where possible, their definitions - Eliminating several new or unfamiliar terms. (authored unit, etc.) - Removing the term Baseline and replacing it with "web technologies that are accessibility supported" and then defining what it means to be accessibility supported. - Removing the nesting of definitions where we could (i.e. definitions that pointed to other definitions) - Trying to word things in manners that are more understandable to different levels of Web expertise - Adding short names/handles on each success criterion to make them easier to find and compare etc. - Simplifying the conformance section Shortening the document overall - Shortening the introduction - Moving much of the discussion out of the guidelines and into the Understanding WCAG 2.0 document - Shortening the conformance section and moving it after the guidelines - Moving information about mapping between WCAG 1 and WCAG 2 to a separate support document (so it can be updated more easily) Creating a Quick Practitioner-oriented Summary / Checklist-like document - Creating a Quick Reference document that has just the Guidelines, success criteria and the techniques for meeting the success criteria. Let us know if the better meets your needs and those of your colleagues.
Received on Thursday, 17 May 2007 23:25:10 UTC