- From: Loretta Guarino Reid <lorettaguarino@google.com>
- Date: Sat, 3 Nov 2007 21:35:43 -0700
- To: "Mary Frances Laughton" <Laughton.MaryFrances@ic.gc.ca>
- Cc: public-comments-WCAG20@w3.org
Dear IAC Canada, 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 ---------------------------------------------------------- Comment 1: Keep 2.4.4 as a Level-A Success Criterion. Source: http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-comments-wcag20/2007Jun/0385.html (Issue ID: 2252) ---------------------------- Original Comment: ---------------------------- The Government of Canada (GoC) feels strongly that requiring that the link purpose (context) be associated with a hyperlink remain a Level-A Success Criterion. While fully cognizant that the ability to render link-text or link-metadata apart from its context is a user-agent feature - and thus not necessarily ought to be a driver for content-markup techniques, we feel that enough people use the link-list features of their user-agents to warrant keeping this Success Criterion at Level A. The GoC feels it is necessary to remind the WCAG that a primary aim of the Guidelines is to inform page authors how to make CONTENT more accessible. We feel that meaningful link purpose in context benefits enough end users to maintain this at Level A. The GoC also recognizes that there are some cases where context might be immediately ascertainable and where repetitive link purpose text might be needlessly redundant (e.g. in tables of links). Proposed Change: No change - leave as Level A Success Criterion. --------------------------------------------- Response from Working Group: --------------------------------------------- We agree, and SC 2.4.4 remains at Level A with some adjustments to the SC language so it now reads: 2.4.4 Link Purpose (In Context): The purpose of each link can be determined from the link text alone, or from the link text together with its programmatically determined link context, except where the purpose of the link would be ambiguous to users in general. ---------------------------------------------------------- Comment 2: A new Success Criterion regarding use of color. Source: http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-comments-wcag20/2007Jun/0386.html (Issue ID: 2253) ---------------------------- Original Comment: ---------------------------- Some sites become essentially unusable (e.g. parts of Facebook.com) when viewed under (Windows OS) high-contrast display rendering schemes and certain user agent settings (accessibility color options) that are used by some people with low vision. We are in the process of doing further research on this topic to determine if this warrants a new success criterion or whether an advisory technique would be sufficient. One advisory might emphasize the need to ALWAYS explicitly set appropriate foreground/background colors (since the cascade doesn't always seem to work as expected). Another might be to recommend designers test their designs against the range of OS Accessibility display renderings. Proposed Change: Please consider a new Success Criterion, "A site should be (operable, perceivable...etc) without relying on color. Moreover, the site should not depend on a specified foreground or background color." --------------------------------------------- Response from Working Group: --------------------------------------------- Not depending on color is already mostly covered by provision 1.4.1. 1.4.1 Use of Color: Color must not be used as the only visual means of conveying information, indicating an action, prompting a response, or distinguishing a visual element. (Level A) The main issue with high contrast settings is that non-standard system default colors are applied to the page. If authors fail to override the default for one color, a system color that they may not have anticipated will be used. This situation is addressed by Failure F24. F24: Failure of SC 1.4.3 and 1.4.5 due to specifying foreground colors without specifying background colors or vice versa" There are a couple additional ways to fail that we did not include. So we are adding the following failures. Failure of 1.4.3 and 1.4.5 due to using background images that do not provide sufficient contrast with foreground text. Failure of SC 1.1.1 due to using CSS to include images that convey important information. ---------------------------------------------------------- Comment 3: An advisory on anti-aliased fonts. Source: http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-comments-wcag20/2007Jun/0387.html (Issue ID: 2254) ---------------------------- Original Comment: ---------------------------- This comment also applies to 1.4.5 and may also apply to the Techniques Document. While the requirement for using a formula to assure a sufficient foreground/background luminosity ratio is clear for solid color elements, and even reasonable for most dithered elements against solid or dithered elements (i.e. through averaging dithered values), one situation should be highlighted as an advisory: anti-aliased fonts especially at small default sizes can be very difficult for some people with reduced visual acuity to distinguish from background even if the "average" contrast ration appears within range. At small sizes, even a black stroke core can be rendered as a lighter gray by the anti aliasing dither: moving out from the core the pixel become lighter still. In the particular example that brought this comment a small anti-aliased font was set against a white background. Two evaluators, one with low vision, and one with 50-year-old eyes had great difficulty reading the text until it had been enlarged (e.g. using Internet Explorer 7's "Change Zoom Level" control to 150% enlargement). The Understanding Success Criterion 1.4.3 and 1.4.5 entries mention: "Note 3: Text can be evaluated with anti-aliasing turned off" we do not feel that this provides designers with sufficient information about the use of small dithered font colors. Proposed Change: GoC recommends adding a discussion and/or examples to illustrate this problem. --------------------------------------------- Response from Working Group: --------------------------------------------- We have added the following to UNDERSTANDING. "When fonts have anti-aliasing applied to make them look smoother, they can lose darkness or lightness. Thus, the actual contrast can be reduced. Thicker stem widths will reduce this effect (thin fonts could have the full stem lightened rather than just the ends). Using larger fonts and testing for legibility in user agents with font smoothing turned on is recommended." ---------------------------------------------------------- Comment 4: Significant improvement over previous drafts Source: http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-comments-wcag20/2007Jun/0384.html (Issue ID: 2295) ---------------------------- Original Comment: ---------------------------- The Government of Canada (GoC) is pleased to see the many changes made to the WCAG 2.0 Guidelines and supporting documents since the previous Last Call Working Draft. Most, if not all, of the changes have the effect of improving both the understandability and usability of the guidelines – at least to people well versed in the field of accessible Web site design. Meeting the twin goals of general appeal and technical rigor is difficult to attain but this draft comes closer to that than any other to date. The GoC looks forward to such features as being able to extract or reformat the information in the supporting documents (presumably in a similar fashion to the Quick Reference guide) and to the fleshing out of techniques, advisories and examples where there are only placeholders at the moment. --------------------------------------------- Response from Working Group: --------------------------------------------- Thank you for taking the time to comment on WCAG. A lot of time and effort has gone into the draft and it has been difficult at times to find the best language to express the requirements and advice when it needs to apply across such a wide (and expanding) variety of technologies. We think that, although not perfect, this draft is a significant advance in the right direction. We look forward to new research that is being done on the Web and on Accessibility that will allow us to go even further in future efforts.
Received on Sunday, 4 November 2007 04:36:01 UTC