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

Dear Steve Paesani,

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: layout tables, user agent identification conformance?
Source: http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-comments-wcag20/2007Jun/0072.html
(Issue ID: 1991)
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Original Comment:
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Document: W2
Item Number: Conformance Requirements
Part of Item:
Comment Type: general comment
Summary of Issue: user agent detection
Comment (Including rationale for any proposed change):
Document compliance without any user agent identification WAI compliance ?

The sorry state of the web's accessibility

MAY have something to do with this.

Though specialized servers that convert documents is nice, a simple
WAI conforming http request attribute suffices.

I am pretty sure many people will move rather readily towards
developing WAI AAA documents once such a specification is in place and
is seen as moving towards wide spread acceptance.

As for removing tables, this is seen as a content/presentation
seperation issue and NOT an assisstive technology issue.

if such is not the case then either a clear explanation as to how
exactly a table is non assisstive could be placed in the Guidelines.

if such is the case then perhaps not trying to associate
assissitveness to 'no tables'

might help in furthening the credibility of the Guidleines. Something
that may affect them being respected hence accepted hence moved upon.

Thank you.

Proposed Change:
More movement towards WAI user agent identification conformance.

Removal of the 'replace tables now' philosophy.

Such changes might prove helpful to all concerned and more readily
furthen the good intentions of the WAI group.

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

The guidelines encourage the correct use of tables for data. The
guidelines do not forbid the use of tables for layout, but the
technique is not encouraged. CSS layout is better supported by AT. The
techniques documents are non-normative, and can be updated, amended
and changed as circumstances and technology changes. Therefore,
content negotiation techniques can be added at any time they are
supported and will work.

Received on Sunday, 4 November 2007 02:18:17 UTC