[DRAFT] comments on WCAG 2.0 baseline

Dear Group,

Last week we discussed the WCAG 2.0 baseline documents. Please find a draft summary of our comments below. Let me know if you have other ones or suggestions to these.


REFERENCE: <http://www.w3.org/TR/WCAG20/conformance>
- "It is possible to conform to WCAG 2.0 using both W3C and non-W3C technologies, as long as the technologies are supported by accessible user agents, including assistive technologies."
- "In choosing Web technologies (HTML, scripting, etc.) that will be used when building content, authors need to know what technologies they can assume will be supported by, and active in, the user agents (including assistive technologies) that people with disabilities will be using."


COMMENTS:
1. When are technologies supported?
Often technologies are only partially supported or have significant bugs in user agents. For example, many CSS 2.0 or even HTML 4.01 implementations support these technologies to varying degrees. When is a technology sufficiently supported so that it can be included in the baseline?

2. Which user agents do people with disabilities use?
How do Web developers and site owners identify user agents that are used by people with disabilities? Similarly, how many implementations need to be available so that the technologies in the baseline can be assumed to be supported?

3. How is support for scripting defined?
User agents may implement specific scripting technologies yet this may not reflect the support for accessibility when using these technologies. For example, many browsers implement JavaScript yet do not support accessibility for using it.

4. What is an accessible user agent?
What are the criteria used to determine accessible user agents? If User Agent Accessibility Guidelines (UAAG) is to be used, is there a relationship between the conformance level of the Web site and of the user agent?


Regards,
  Shadi


-- 
Shadi Abou-Zahra     Web Accessibility Specialist for Europe | 
Chair & Staff Contact for the Evaluation and Repair Tools WG | 
World Wide Web Consortium (W3C)           http://www.w3.org/ | 
Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI),   http://www.w3.org/WAI/ | 
WAI-TIES Project,                http://www.w3.org/WAI/TIES/ | 
Evaluation and Repair Tools WG,    http://www.w3.org/WAI/ER/ | 
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Received on Monday, 22 May 2006 09:36:38 UTC