Your comments on WCAG 2.0 Last Call Draft of April 2006

Dear JackP ,

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/20060731085438.54B15D784D@saba.w3.mag.keio.ac.jp
(Issue ID: LC-1446)

Affiliation: None
Document: W2
Item Number: ensure-compat-parses
Part of Item:
Comment Type: technical
Comment (Including rationale for any proposed change):
Just a note that you asked for comments and from my own personal trawl
of the archives, I found 19 separate comments related to
validity/unambigous parsing. Of these, 18 of the comments desired
returning to the \'validates\' criteria as used in WCAG 1 at either
Level 1 or 2. That\'s almost 95% of the people making a comment
wanting validity back.

(also see public posting on same:

http://www.thepickards.co.uk/index.php/200606/validity-those-taking-up-arms/

)

Proposed Change:
Re-include validity at level 2 as a strenghtening of SC 4.1.1.

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

The working group looked at this topic carefully over an extended
period of time and concluded that requiring strict adherence to all
aspects of specifications does not necessarily result in an increase
in accessibility. For example, it is possible to create invalid pages
that present no accessibility barriers. It is also possible in certain
situations to enhance accessibility through the use of markup that is
not part of the specification.

The working group must work within its charter and only include things
that directly affected accessibility. Some aspects of "use
technologies according to specification" and validity do relate to
accessibility. However, others do not. So requiring validity would
take us beyond our charter. We do recommend it though and it is our #1
technique listed for conforming to SC 4.1.1.

Received on Thursday, 17 May 2007 23:35:46 UTC