[wbs] response to 'Call for Review: Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.2 is a W3C Proposed Recommendation'

The following answers have been successfully submitted to 'Call for Review:
Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.2 is a W3C Proposed
Recommendation' (Advisory Committee) for Deque Systems, Inc. by Melanie
Philipp.

Regarding the "Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.2"
specification, the reviewer  suggests the document not be published as a
Recommendation [Formal Objection] (your details below).


Additional comments about the specification:
   Deque supports the removal of SC 4.1.1 Parsing from WCAG 2.2. However,
without FIRST addressing SC 4.1.1 Parsing in WCAG 2.0 and WCAG 2.1,
removing SC 4.1.1 Parsing from WCAG 2.2 breaks the backward compatibility
of WCAG 2.2 to earlier versions. In other words, one can conform with WCAG
2.2 but may not conform with WCAG 2.0 and WCAG 2.1.

Deque will withdraw our objection to publication of WCAG 2.2 when: 

1. The WCAG 2.0 errata document is updated or the spec republished,
2. And the WCAG 2.1 spec has been republished, 
3. And the 4.1.1 Understanding Documents for both have been updated.

Deque has consistently emphasized in the last months (in AGWG meetings,
email, directly to the chairs, and other forums) the importance of the
order of handling 4.1.1 for backwards compatibility and that Deque would
object if not done. These actions have already been agreed to during AGWG
work, per the working group’s decision in March, but not executed
(https://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/w3c-wai-gl/2023JanMar/0426.html). It
includes placing the following note in both the Success Criterion and the
4.1.1 Understanding Documents: 

“This Success Criterion should be considered as automatically met for any
content using HTML or XML.

Since this criterion was written, the HTML Standard has adopted specific
requirements governing how user agents must handle incomplete tags,
incorrect element nesting, duplicate attributes, and non-unique IDs. 

Although the HTML Standard treats some of these cases as non-conforming for
authors, it is considered to "allow these features" for the purposes of
this Success Criterion because the specification requires that user agents
support handling these cases consistently. In practice, this criterion no
longer provides any benefit to people with disabilities in itself. 

Issues such as missing roles due to inappropriately nested elements or
incorrect states or names due to a duplicate ID are covered by different
Success Criteria and should be reported there rather than as issues with
4.1.1.”



The reviewer's organization:
   - produces products addressed by this specification
   - expects to produce products conforming to this specification.
   - expects to produce content conforming to this specification.
   - expects to use products conforming to this specification.

Answers to this questionnaire can be set and changed at
https://www.w3.org/2002/09/wbs/33280/2023-07_PR_WCAG22/ until 2023-08-18.

 Regards,

 The Automatic WBS Mailer

Received on Tuesday, 8 August 2023 13:45:04 UTC