- From: Denis Boudreau <dboudreau@accessibiliteweb.com>
- Date: Mon, 03 Oct 2011 10:49:03 -0400
- To: Eval TF <public-wai-evaltf@w3.org>
Hi all, My rationale is quite simple. Once people have to comply to a certain set of requirements, they'll do everything they can to find a way out. In the case of mandatory accessibility standards, as it was the case in Quebec, people have been trying in every possible way to make us tell them that their website was "special" and therefore, should be considered an exception. They usually would come at us saying that their website is different because it was "promotional, transactional, event-driven, fun-driven", etc. That "it was not a web site, it was an application", you name it. Every time, we had to explain to them that their website was intended for the general public and therefore needed to be made accessible. We then came up with this definition basically saying "if your website fits in this description, don't bother coming to us for exemption, you're not going to get it. You need to make it accessible". As we're coming up with an evaluation methodology, I suspect governments around the world might be tempted to adopt it as the proper way to do things. I also expect organizations in these governments to try and find a way out too. By being much more precise as to what we mean with our definition of a website, I'm trying to prevent the same thing to happen all over the place. :) Now, this is what we came up in Quebec and for us, in our context that is essentially HTML, PDF or multimedia driven, it was suitable. It's a pretty thorough definition and once you mean to apply it to a website, there's really no way to escape it. I understand that in the context of this taskforce, it's much more complex so I don't really care if we keep my proposition as is or not. All I'm asking is that if this group feels what I'm bringing now can be perceived as a potential problem at some point in the future, that we try to fix this before we get the same kind of problems at a much wider level. Best, /Denis On 2011-10-03, at 10:23 AM, Michael S Elledge wrote: > I am also concerned that we not exclude non-html technologies. I understand the need to restrict the delivery of a website to a user agent (otherwise it could also include "software" which is defined separately by W3C), but there is enough content being delivered that is not based on html that we should be sure to include it in our definition. > > I think this would also be compatible with WCAG 2.0's "technology-agnostic" approach. > > Mike > > >> That seems to be a more technically specific description Denis. > > I wonder whether we need to extend either description to reference page assets as well though? > > Flash/PDF/Silverlight/whatever entities for example? >> >> Léonie. > On 10/3/2011 12:59 AM, Shadi Abou-Zahra wrote: >> Hi Denis, >> >> Short: what is it that you are trying to fix? ;) >> >> Long: please explain what issues you see with the current proposal and >> some of the rationale for your suggestion. In particular, I'm not sure >> what is meant by an "organized" vs "un-organized" set of related pages >> and why you want to restrict a website to something being on a single >> "web server". Also, the "HTTP protocol" and "accessed by a user agent" >> aspects are already in the WCAG2 definition of a web page so I think >> there is no need to repeat that in the definition of "website". >> >> Best, >> Shadi >> >> >> On 3.10.2011 06:24, Denis Boudreau wrote: >>> Hi all, >>> >>> Having looked at the current I'd like to propose, if I may, another >>> definition for what a "website" is. >>> >>> Right now, we have: "A coherent collection of one or more related web >>> pages that together provide common use or functionality. It includes >>> static web pages, dynamically generated web pages, and web >>> applications". >>> >>> I think something along the lines of the following would cover more >>> ground and circumscribe more efficiently what we mean by "website": >>> >>> "An organized set of related web pages using HTML or XHTML, linked in >>> a coherent structure, hosted on a Web server, accessed by a user >>> agent and governed by the HTTP or the HTTPS protocol". >>> >>> Any thoughts? >>> >>> /Denis >>> >>> >>> >>> >>> >>> >> >
Received on Monday, 3 October 2011 14:49:58 UTC