Your comments on WCAG 2.0 Public Working Draft of May, 2007

Dear Shawn Henry,

Thank you for your comments on the 17 May 2007 Public Working Draft of
the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 2.0 (WCAG 2.0
http://www.w3.org/TR/2007/WD-WCAG20-20070517/). The WCAG Working Group
has reviewed all comments received on the May draft, and will be
publishing an updated Public Working Draft shortly. Before we do that,
we would like to know whether we have understood your comments
correctly, and also whether you are satisfied with our resolutions.

Please review our resolutions for the following comments, and reply to
us by 19 November 2007 at public-comments-wcag20@w3.org to say whether
you are satisfied. Note that this list is publicly archived. Note also
that we are not asking for new issues, nor for an updated review of
the entire document at this time.

Please see below for the text of comments that you submitted and our
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 WCAG 2.0 Editor's
Draft of May-October 2007 at
http://www.w3.org/WAI/GL/WCAG20/WD-WCAG20-20071102/

Thank you for your time reviewing and sending comments. Though we
cannot always do exactly what each commenter requests, all of the
comments are valuable to the development of WCAG 2.0.

Regards,

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: LC-992, LC-1000: organizational comments on guidelines
Source: http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-comments-wcag20/2007Jun/0326.html
(Issue ID: 2181)
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Original Comment:
----------------------------

LC-992:

The addition of short handles on the success criteria and principles
is excellent. I still recommend them for the guidelines as well, for
the same reasons stated previously.

LC-1000:

My proposed change had three points. The first was: "Leave the
Principles as they are in /TR/WCAG20. Remove the first numbering from
all guidelines and success criteria..." I'm not sure I agree with your
response to that point; however, I am quite willing to accept the
decision of the Working Group, especially since you added short
handles that make referencing the success criteria in informal
communication so much easier and reducing the need to use the numbers
for common reference.

I don't see a response to my other two points:
* Add the Principles into "Understanding". - I see that there is now a
"Understanding the Four Principles of Accessibility" section in the
Understanding doc, and I don't think it make sense to add them as
headings throughout the doc. Therefore, I think this comment is
addressed.
* Consider including the Principles in the Quick Ref and Checklist. -
I think it would probably be best to have the Principles in the Quick
Reference. However, I haven't done enough work with users yet to have
a good idea of the issues for and against having the Principles there.
In order to simplify overall comment processing (for me and you), I
will open a new comment on the Quick Reference, and you can close this
one.

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

We have now created Handles for the Guidelines as well.

We have shortened the introduction considerably and moved the
principles discussion to the Understanding Document.  We have also
edited the principles in response to a wide range of comments.

We did not add the principles to the Quick Reference because, on
investigation, we found it added more complexity to the document than
we want to have.

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Comment 2: 1.4.3 and 1.4.5 missing "background" ? only text ?
Source: http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-comments-wcag20/2007Jul/0032.html
(Issue ID: 2318)
----------------------------
Original Comment:
----------------------------

Current wording: "Text (and images of text) have a contrast ratio of
at least..." It seems you need to say that the text has a contract
ratio with it's background, e.g., previous wording "Text or diagrams,
and their background, have a luminosity contrast ratio of at least
5:1"

Also, does this really only cover text? Are other things -- such as
data in a graph -- covered elsewhere?

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

You will find the word 'backgound' in the definition of "contrast
ratio".  It is commonly understood that requiring text to have
contrast means contrast with what is immediately behind it. We removed
the phrase 'and their background', since this is often a relative
concept in technologies like HTML/CSS that can scroll or reflow and
have partial opacity. In general what is 'background' is not knowable
until the final rendering, and the original clause implied a level of
fixity which was not appropriate. It is therefore better handled in
the definitions where it talks about foreground and background and it
is clearer.

We are only applying this to text because when we tried applying it to
other things like graphs and charts we ended up with numerous
exceptions and problems.      In the end we decided that the most
severe problem was reading running text when the contrast is very low.
  Also, data in a graph would need to be described in a long
description - and can be viewed under magnification.

----------------------------------------------------------
Comment 3: Guideline 1.1 wording
Source: http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-comments-wcag20/2007Jul/0033.html
(Issue ID: 2319)
----------------------------
Original Comment:
----------------------------

Here is a note related to a previous comment that suggests changing
"Guideline 1.1 Provide text alternatives for any non-text content so
that it can be changed into other forms people need such as large
print, braille, speech, symbols or simpler language"
to
"Guideline 1.1  Provide text alternatives for all non-text content."
at:
http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-comments-wcag20/2007Jun/0411.html#options3

In a usability test of the Quick Reference the participant was slowed
down and bothered by the extra wording. Even though he is not an
accessibility specialist, he already knows about alt text (as will a
large percent of the people who will be using WCAG 2.0). He had a few
things to say about it, including suggesting a simple example under
each one. He concluded with: "It should be 'Guideline 1.1: Provide
text alternatives. full stop. Then the rest is underneath it. That way
I can skip it if I already grok it."

I agree with keeping the guideline text short and succinct, and
putting the other information outside of the guideline text itself. (I
envision having an option on the Quick Reference to show brief
explanations and examples... but that's another thing...)

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

That is what it said before we added the extra language to make it
easier to understand for people new to the guidelines and for
policymakers etc.  We were concerned that adding the information as a
note would cause it to be lost as the guidelines were copied, made
into lists etc.

Received on Sunday, 4 November 2007 02:13:40 UTC