Your comments on WCAG 2.0 Last Call Draft of April 2006

Dear Jason Gottshall ,

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/37C02BA0C03A6C46B81E07135754B8A803BF27BD@cadc.hq.capwiz.com
(Issue ID: LC-658)

As a web developer who has not yet begun implementing accessibility
standards, I'm confused and daunted by the current proposed WCAG 2.0
standard. From what I have read so far, it is at times incomplete,
contradictory, and meaningless. I can't even begin to explain what's
wrong, because I can't even begin to understand what's right.

Please take some more time to re-evaluate this document. Don't give us a
standard we can't use.

Jason Gottshall
Developer
Knowlegis.net

--
Jason Gottshall
jgottshall@capitoladvantage.com

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

We have done an extensive rewrite of the guidelines with a focus on
making them easier to understand and to remove any apparent conflicts.

We have also shortened and simplified them. Some of the things we have
done include:

Easier language to understand
- Wrote simpler guidelines
- Removed as many technical terms (jargon) as possible replacing them
with plainer language or, where possible, their definitions
- Eliminated several new or unfamiliar terms. (authored unit, etc.)
- Removed the term Baseline and replaced it with "web technologies
that are accessibility supported" and then defined what it means to be
accessibility supported.
- Removed the nesting of definitions where we could (i.e. definitions
that pointed to other definitions)
- Tried to word things in manners that are more understandable to
different levels of Web expertise
- Added short names/handles on each success criterion to make them
easier to find and compare etc.
- Simplified the conformance

Shortening the document overall
- Shortened the introduction
- Moved much of the discussion out of the guidelines and put it in the
Understanding WCAG 2.0 document
- Shortened the conformance section and moved it after the guidelines
- Moved mapping from WCAG 1 to a separate support document (so it can
be updated more easily)

Creating a Quick Practitioner-oriented Summary / Checklist-like document
- Created a Quick Reference document that has just the Guidelines,
success criteria and the techniques for meeting the success criteria.

Hopefully, this new version will much better meet your needs.

Received on Thursday, 17 May 2007 23:36:03 UTC