Definition of Documents

In responding to comments made during our public review of WCAG2ICT it appears that we have a flaw in our definition of document. Our current definition is:

document (as used in WCAG2ICT)
assembly of content, such as a file, set of files, or streamed media that is not part of software and that does not include its own user agent

Note 1: A documents always requires a user agent to present its content to the user.

Note 2: Letters, spreadsheets, emails, books, pictures, presentations, and movies are examples of documents.

Note 3: Anything that can present its own content without involving a user agent, such as a self playing book, is not a document but is software.

Note 4: A single document may be composed of multiple files such as the video content, closed caption text, etc. This fact is not usually apparent to the end-user consuming the document / content. This is similar to how a single web page can be composed of content from multiple URIs (e.g. the page text, images, the JavaScript, a CSS file etc.).



 however, this definition is so broad that an entire email system (such as Outlook which stores all of the email in a single .PST file) would qualify as a single document. In fact, an entire hard drive (that did not contain the OS or apps that displayed it)  could be considered a document.

I therefore suggest that the phrase
" that is meant to function as a single entity rather than a collection,"

 be added so that it reads:

assembly of content, such as a file, set of files, or streamed media that is meant to function as a single entity rather than a collection, that is not part of software, and that does not include its own user agent 


Comments welcome 

Gregg
--------------------------------------------------------
Gregg Vanderheiden Ph.D.
Director Trace R&D Center
Professor Industrial & Systems Engineering
and Biomedical Engineering University of Wisconsin-Madison
Technical Director - Cloud4all Project - http://Cloud4all.info
Co-Director, Raising the Floor - International - http://Raisingthefloor.org
and the Global Public Inclusive Infrastructure Project -  http://GPII.net