Your comments on WCAG 2.0 Last Call Draft of April 2006

Dear Shibu.T ,

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/20060622152129.2E89C33201@kearny.w3.org
(Issue ID: LC-890)

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

WCAG 2.0, addresses almost all the open issues against the previous
working draft. WCAG 2.0 working draft Guidelines and success criteria
are more robust and testable. We\'ve reviewed the draft and have the
following suggestions:


Proposed Change:

*The issues of multiple disabled persons should be specified in the Draft.
*All the imperative sentences should be changed to declarative
sentences for the easiness of reference.
*Check for the proper usage of the words, 'Criteria' (plural) and
'Criterion'(singular).

*Splitting of words should be avoided for the proper understanding of
the users who are using assistive technologies like screen readers and
we would like to add this issue to WCAG 2.0.

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

Regarding multiple disabilities:  We aren't specifying disabilities in
the guidelines themselves.  In the support documents we refer to
people by characteristics they may have.  Thus a single person may be
referred to in different places for having different disabilities.
Also, disability pairs like deaf-blindness that have particular
significance we try to mention where they are specifically addressed.
If you see additional places where we missed a disability-pair, please
let us know.

Regarding imperatives:  The guidelines (which are general directives)
are all imperatives.  However all of the success criteria are
declaratives.   We are keeping the guidelines as imperatives so that
they are not confused with the success criteria and so that people do
not try to assess them as testable when they are meant to be
directive.

Regarding Criteria/Criterion:  Thank you. We hope to have caught them
all and fixed them.  I'm sure we have them all in the guidelines
themselves now.  If you see any in any of the support documents, just
drop us a note any time.

Regarding splitting of words: The working group believes this issue is
covered by success criterion 1.3.3, "When the sequence of the content
affects its meaning, that sequence can be programmatically
determined." Specifically, F32: Failure of SC 1.3.3 due to using white
space characters to control spacing within a word
(http://www.w3.org/TR/WCAG20-TECHS/Overview.html#F32) illustrates
situations where the use of blank characters to visually format
individual words will make it difficult for users of assistive
technology to understand the content.

Received on Thursday, 17 May 2007 23:44:07 UTC