Your comments on WCAG 2.0 Last Call Draft of April 2006

Dear Martin Stehle ,

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

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Comment 1:

Source: http://www.w3.org/mid/927584643.20060523115257@snafu.de
(Issue ID: LC-588)

Comment (including rationale for any proposed change):

The concept of baselines is misleading. One could define "AVI, TXT" as
a valid baseline to tell his/her video collection "conform to WCAG
2.0" and can communicate the site as "accessible". To me this is
senseless.

Proposed Change:

If there is a baseline, there should be a minimal requirement, at
least for "HTML".

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

The conformance section of WCAG2 has been completely rewritten. The
term "baseline" has been replaced by "accessibility-supported Web
technologies". The issue of what it means to be an
accessibility-supported Web technology is addressed in the section
"Accessibility Support of Web Technologies" at
http://www.w3.org/TR/2007/WD-WCAG20-20070517/#accessibility-support .

WCAG 2.0 is technology neutral, so it would be inappropriate to
require any specific technology, such as HTML. (We would,
nevertheless, be surprised to find environments that did not consider
HTML to be accessibility supported).

If a Web page relies on nothing but AVI and text, it would still need
to satisfy all the WCAG success criteria for the level of conformance
claimed.


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

Source: http://www.w3.org/mid/927584643.20060523115257@snafu.de
(Issue ID: LC-589)

Comment (including rationale for any proposed change):

The note "These techniques may need to be adapted for Web-based
presentation" is not really helpful.

Proposed Change:

Link to examples, e.g. http://www.taubenschlag.de/videos/index.html.
Add a english translation of the German guidelines for Sign Language
Videos.

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

"These techniques may need to be adapted for Web-based presentation"
is helpful because it makes it clear that there may be some
distinctions between what works on TV and what works on the web. It is
a sort of disclaimer that says "here are some resources that may help,
but be aware that they are not designed for the web and although some
strategies might be useful, others may not be transferable to the
web." It is beyond the scope of these guidelines to go further than
that. If someone provides techniques for web videos we will be glad to
link to those.

It is beyond the scope of this group to translate German techniques
documents. If somemone else does it, we will be glad to link to them
if they will be helpful in meeting our guidelines.

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

Source: http://www.w3.org/mid/927584643.20060523115257@snafu.de
(Issue ID: LC-591)

Comment (including rationale for any proposed change):

Reasons of why using sign language videos are wrong.

Proposed Change:

Replace it with: "The intent of this success criterion is to enable
people who are deaf or hard of hearing and who are fluent in the sign
language to understand whole texts. Many people, especially native
signers, find it easier to follow sign language than to read the text,
since the text are often a second language to them."

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

The intent section for 1.2.5 has been revised to read:

The intent of this success criterion is to enable people who are deaf
or hard of hearing and who are fluent in a sign language to understand
the content of the audio track of multimedia presentations. Written
text, such as that found in captions, is often a second language. Some
individuals will require sign language interpretation to gain full
access to the multimedia content.

----------------------------------------------------------
Comment 4:

Source: http://www.w3.org/mid/927584643.20060523115257@snafu.de
(Issue ID: LC-592)

Comment (including rationale for any proposed change):

The technical notes are not wrong, but misleading. One can get the
impression that sign language videos are only necessary if there are
captions in videos. This does not meet the reality.

Proposed Change:

Please delete this notes.

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

Captions are required for all multimedia at level AA (1.2.1 Captions
are provided for prerecorded multimedia., 1.2.4 Captions are provided
for live multimedia. ) It is helpful to discuss why signed language
interpretation is needed even though captions are already available in
any multimedia being considered at level AAA.

----------------------------------------------------------
Comment 5:

Source: http://www.w3.org/mid/927584643.20060523115257@snafu.de
(Issue ID: LC-593)

Comment (including rationale for any proposed change):

The technique "Providing a synchronized video of the sign language
interpreter that can be displayed in a different viewport or overlaid
on the image by the player." can be deleted. There is no need for a
different viewport. The video can be placed in the same viewport,
either on the same page or in an own page.

Proposed Change:

Replace this with "If the sign language interpreter expresses a
content of a video you can include a sign language interpreter in the
corner of the video stream. For best comprehensibility only use this
technique in videos with fullscreen size."

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

The technique you propose would also be sufficient, so we have added
it.  We did not eliminate the option on the part of the author to put
it into a new viewport (which could be independently scaled) because
that would also be sufficient.   The new technique is titled
"Providing a new page that has the video with the sign language
interpretation of the audio track."   You are welcome to write up this
technique if you like and submit it using our technique submission
form at http://www.w3.org/WAI/GL/WCAG20/TECHS-SUBMIT/.  If you do not
we will try to create the technique from the notes you sent.

----------------------------------------------------------
Comment 6:

Source: http://www.w3.org/mid/927584643.20060523115257@snafu.de
(Issue ID: LC-594)

Comment (including rationale for any proposed change):

The technique "Including a sign language interpreter in the corner of
the video stream" is only sensible for fullscreen videos, otherwise
the signer is too small and not understandable.

Proposed Change:

Replace this with "Provide a video with a sign language interpreter
expressing the text contents without restrictions."

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

The technique was adapted from TV and you are right that resizable
windows on a computer screen may make the signer unreadable. But this
is a user agent issue. All videos players should have a mechanism to
play videos full screen. So usually it would be up to the user to
maximize the screen.

However, we have added the following note to the technique G54.

Note: If the video stream is too small, the sign language interpreter
will be indiscernible. When creating a video steam that includes a
video of a sign language interpreter, make sure there is a mechanism
to play the video stream full screen in the baseline technology.
Otherwise, be sure the interpreter portion of the video is adjustable
to the size it would be had the entire video stream been full screen."

----------------------------------------------------------
Comment 7:

Source: http://www.w3.org/mid/927584643.20060523115257@snafu.de
(Issue ID: LC-595)

Comment (including rationale for any proposed change):

The thesis "People whose primary language is a sign language sometimes
have limited reading ability" is not always true. The reading ability
of native signers is broad, from low to top. The focus on captions is
not meeting the reality. Many native signers are able to understand
captions. The focus has to move to the complete content, i.e. the
texts.

Proposed Change:

Replace it with "These individuals may not be able to read and
comprehend the textual contents and thus require a sign language
interpretation to gain access to the multimedia content."

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

We have adopted your recommendation  into the intent sections for SC
1.2.5 with a slight revision to indicate that this isn't true for all.
It now reads as follows:

'The intent of this success criterion is to enable people who are deaf
or hard of hearing and who are fluent in the sign language to
understand the content of the audio track of multimedia presentations.
Written text, such as that found in captions is often a second
language to them. Some of these individuals may not be able to read
and comprehend the textual content of captions or may not be able to
read it quickly enough and thus require a sign language interpretation
to gain access to the multimedia content.'

----------------------------------------------------------
Comment 8:

Source: http://www.w3.org/mid/927584643.20060523115257@snafu.de
(Issue ID: LC-596)

Comment (including rationale for any proposed change):

The thesis "Some people who communicate using sign language and are
proficient readers may have impaired vision which may make it
difficult to read the captions on the screen. A sign language
interpretation may be easier to view." is misleading: Captions are
zoomable, a video with a signer is not zoomable to meet impaired
vision.

Proposed Change:

Suggestion: Delete it.

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

Your comment has been adopted and the bullet about vision impaired
people reading captions has been deleted from the benefits section of
how to meet SC 1.2.5.

----------------------------------------------------------
Comment 9:

Source: http://www.w3.org/mid/927584643.20060523115257@snafu.de
(Issue ID: LC-597)

Comment (including rationale for any proposed change):

The note "Different sites may address...sufficient by the working
group" is a little bit misleading in case of deaf people.

Proposed Change:

Please add to the note that in case of deaf people it is wrong to
think about deaf people as human beings not able to understand "texts
above upper secondary education level". It is not about cognitive
impairments, it is about linguistic matters. It is just that many deaf
people understand sign language better than written language, because
sign language is their mother tongue. With sign language "texts above
upper secondary education level" are more understandable for deaf
people.

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

Thanks you for your suggestion. We have replaced the sentence

"For sites designed for people who are deaf a sign language version of
the page may be most useful for users who cannot understand the text
well."

with the sentence

"For some people who are deaf, a sign language version of the page may
be easier to understand than a written language version since sign
language may be their first language."

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

Source: http://www.w3.org/mid/20060531094026.1A47FDAF01@w3c4-bis.w3.org
(Issue ID: LC-663)

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

The definition of "multimedia" is misleading. It says: "audio or video
synchronized with another type of media and/or with time-based
interactive components"

Thus anything not synchronized with something is no multimedia, e.g.
video without subtitles, audio files etc. This leads to the conclusion
there is no need to provide an alternative content for a media file as
long it is not synchronized. Thus podcats, news on videos and live
video streams will not be accessible for deaf and hard of hearing
people, because the alternative version is omitted.


Proposed Change:

Change the definition in "any audio, video or animation file. It can
be synchronized with another type of media and/or with time-based
interactive components".

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

For audio only or video only files, it is Guideline 1.1 that applies
rather than Guideline 1.2.  Guideline 1.1 requires that all non-text
content except multimedia have text alternatives.  So audio only, and
video only files would need text equivalents under 1.1 unless they
were just for sensory experience.

Received on Thursday, 17 May 2007 23:42:03 UTC