Re: Conformance question

Gregory,
My problem with the one type of conformance is that it will only idenitify
tools which comply to all checkpoints.  I am assuming that it may take a
long time for authoring tool developers to understand and to comply with
many of the checkpoints in guideline 7 and until some developers do there
will be no tools that conform.  I hope I am wrong about developers interest
in accessible tools, but based on the AU discussions it is a controversal
issue and acceptance of it maybe slow by developers.  But again I hope I am
wrong about developers interest and priority of adding accessibility
features, especially if only one level of conformance is maintained in the
guidelines. 

So in the mean time tools that produce accessible markup can only be
identified through trial and error.  This will mean alot of work for me and
other people to identify tools which produce accessible markup to recommend
to authors (in my case instructors on the UIUC campus) to produce
accessible web materials.  If there were two levels of conformance then it
would be a lot less work for me and other people to identify a tool
capabilities.  Naturally I would like to recommend tools that produce both
accessible mark up and are highly accessible to people with disabilities,
but many authors have strong preferences on tools may not care about
accessibility of the tool (unfortunatley I think this may be the majority
of web authors and hopefully something WAI and other groups can help
reduce).   

The advantage to me and others like me who want to recommend tools to have
two levels of conformance is basically:

1. More timely information on a tools capabilities related to accessibility

2. Potentially gives authors more choices on tools that produce accessible
markup.  Many authors have strong preferences and giving them choices
improves the chance of them using tools that create accessible markup.

I am in total support of the goal of having accessible authoring tools and
accessible markup, I am just stating my interest in how the guidelines
conformance statement can help me in improving the accessibility of Web
materials on the UIUC campus.

Jon


Jon Gunderson, Ph.D., ATP
Coordinator of Assistive Communication and Information Technology
Chair, W3C WAI User Agent Working Group
Division of Rehabilitation - Education Services
University of Illinois at Urbana/Champaign
1207 S. Oak Street
Champaign, IL 61820

Voice: 217-244-5870
Fax: 217-333-0248
E-mail: jongund@uiuc.edu
WWW:	http://www.staff.uiuc.edu/~jongund
		http://www.w3.org/wai/ua
		http://www.als.uiuc.edu/InfoTechAccess

Received on Wednesday, 22 September 1999 16:09:49 UTC