Your comments on WCAG 2.0 Last Call Draft of April 2006

Dear Emmanuelle Gutiérrez y Restrepo ,

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/20060622155552.E37BEDAF01@w3c4-bis.w3.org
(Issue ID: LC-891)

Part of Item:
Comment Type: substantive
Comment (including rationale for proposed change):

The National Confederation of Deaf Persons of Spain (CNSE)have
requested to us that we support to obtain an improvement in the
accessibility for the deaf people.
Being conscious of the differences between the languages of signs
worldwide and the lack of equivalence with the languages spoken in
each country, we considered that some reasonable advances by means of
the following changes could be included.

Proposed Change:

1.1.2 For prerecorded sound of spoken language provide sign language
interpretation equivalent.

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

Guideline 1.1 requires "text" alternatives for non-text content. Sign
language is not text. At some point in the future, if assistive
technology is developed that can produce a sign language version of
text content, then success criterion 1.1.1 will ensure that the text
alternative for audio content is available. In addition, success
criterion 3.1.5 includes a (future) technique on providing sign
language versions of content ("Providing sign language versions of
information, ideas, and processes that must be understood in order to
use the content").


----------------------------------------------------------
Comment 2:

Source: http://www.w3.org/mid/20060622155812.2DDBCDAF01@w3c4-bis.w3.org
(Issue ID: LC-892)

Part of Item:
Comment Type: general comment
Comment (including rationale for proposed change):

The National Confederation of Deaf Persons of Spain (CNSE)have
requested to us that we support to obtain an improvement in the
accessibility for the deaf people.
Being conscious of the differences between the languages of signs
worldwide and the lack of equivalence with the languages spoken in
each country, we considered that some reasonable advances by means of
the following changes could be included.

Proposed Change:

Include the 1.2.5 in the Level 2 Success Criteria for Guideline 1.2

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

The working group considered carefully the levels assigned to all the
GL 1.2 success criteria.  Delivery of sign language interpretation is
more specialized, and difficult as compared to text captioning. Even
with proper tools, a web author cannot do this without special
training and skills, including the ability to translate into another
language.  Also some multimedia is fully usable at small size and
marginal bandwidth setting and captions only marginally increase the
demands. By comparison, sign language interpretation requires a
relative large size, high resolution, and fast delivery rate. These
aspects of sign language interpretation make the success criterion
appropriate for Level AAA.

----------------------------------------------------------
Comment 3:

Source: http://www.w3.org/mid/20060622160525.3C001DAF01@w3c4-bis.w3.org
(Issue ID: LC-893)

Part of Item:
Comment Type: general comment
Comment (including rationale for proposed change):

The National Confederation of Deaf Persons of Spain (CNSE)have
requested to us that we support to obtain an improvement in the
accessibility for the deaf people.
Being conscious of the differences between the languages of signs
worldwide and the lack of equivalence with the languages spoken in
each country, we considered that some reasonable advances by means of
the following changes could be included.

Proposed Change:

To add a requirement to offer, always, an alternative in sign language
interpretation for certain textual contents. Level 1 (a)
For example:
- Page of presentation of the website: presentation of the authors,
people in charge, objectives of the site, scheme of the content (map
of the site).
- Possible services that are supplied and instructions to make use of such.
- Possible supplied products and instructions for its handling,
acquisition or manipulation, etc.
- Information on the contact form and steps to follow to clarify
doubts, to resolve incidences, to contribute suggestions, etc.

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

Although we recognize that reading text may be challenging for some
deaf people, the working group believes that providing text versions
of the content is the basic accessibility requirement. We are also not
clear how to characterize the classes of content for which you are
requesting that sign language versions be required.

Because sign language interpretation can be an accessibility
enhancement for deaf users, we have added an advisory technique to GL
3.1 to provide sign language interpretation for all text content.

Received on Thursday, 17 May 2007 23:33:06 UTC