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

Dear Tim Andersen,

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: asking the entire web to become authors for those who do
not comprehend English
Source: http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-comments-wcag20/2007May/0132.html
(Issue ID: 1933)
----------------------------
Original Comment:
----------------------------

I write webpages for University students and others at at a high
language level, where I use foreign language terms, there are links to
a glossary of word definitions, but I cannot reproduce the entire site
which currently passes Priority Three into simple language for a
secondary school child. How can any complex subject or University level
website comply with this demand to bring down the English language to
the level of secondary school student.

You are asking the entire web to become authors for those who do not
comprehend English, this is the lowest standard bringing down academic
values in an effort to enforce mediocrity.

3.1.5 Reading Level: When text requires reading ability more advanced
than the lower secondary education level, supplemental content  or an
alternate version   is available that does not require reading ability
more advanced than the lower secondary education level. (Level
AAA)Understanding Success

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

We agree that providing alternate versions at a lower reading level
cannot reasonably be done on all Web pages. That's why this provision
is at Level AAA. Because of the tighter limits that Level AAA places
on both presentation and content, it may not be possible to satisfy
this level of conformance for all types of content. (See the
description of the three levels of conformance at
http://www.w3.org/TR/2007/WD-WCAG20-20070517/#overview-levels).

However, rewriting the Web page at a lower reading level is only one
of the ways to satisfy this success criterion. (See Understanding
Success Criterion 3.1.5 at
http://www.w3.org/TR/UNDERSTANDING-WCAG20/Overview.html#meaning-supplements.)
There are a variety of forms of supplemental content that could be
provided, such as a simplified summary, visual illustrations of the
complex ideas in the content, or a spoken version of the text on the
page. Such supplements will make complex subjects easier to understand
for people with certain disabilities.

Received on Sunday, 4 November 2007 02:19:59 UTC