Re: Draft Response To "Do No Harm" PR Issue

Are we approaching consensus on something like the following?:

The working group has considered the suggestion. We reject it on the
following grounds:

1. Determining finer grained priority levels is unliekly to achieve
consensus. In particular, although there is consensus in the Working group
that the current set of Priority one checkpoints are an acceptable set, ther
is strong disagreement over which should be implemented first. In fact in
existing authoring tools there are different implementation approaches. In
particular, there is a strong sentiment that the first priority should
instead be "make the tool accessible to people with disabilities", and some
suggestion that it should be "promote accessibility in documentation".
Attempting to resolve these differences seems unlikely to make any progress,
although it will necessarily delay the release of the Guidelines as a
recommendation.

2. Providing an endorsement for such a trivial level of accesibility, which
is simple for some developers to achieve while it requires others to rework
their entire application structure seems counter to the goals of having
actually accessible tools available.

3. Determining the order in which to approach checkpoints is really an
implementation-level decision which itis inappropriate for the Working Group
to make, since it involves many factors that are relevant to an
individual development project rather than to end user needs, which are the
determinants of priority in the specification.

Charles McCN

On Tue, 30 Nov 1999, Gregory J. Rosmaita wrote:

  the following bounced back to me, apparently while the W3C's server was
  down...  interesting thing is that the rejection notice came from
  www19.w3.org.by way of sophia.inria.fr
  
  anyway, i sent this whilst still on hold with my bank, shortly before
  today's meeting commenced... 
  
  --- REPOSTED MESSAGE ---
  Date: Tue, 30 Nov 1999 15:17:58 -0500
  To: Charles McCathieNevile <charles@w3.org>
  From: "Gregory J. Rosmaita" <unagi69@concentric.net>
  Subject: Re: Draft Response To "Do No Harm" PR Issue
  Cc: Authoring Tools Guidelines List <w3c-wai-au@w3.org>
  In-Reply-To: <Pine.LNX.4.20.9911301112500.31384-100000@tux.w3.org>
  
  aloha, charles!
  
  i do feel strongly that
  
  quote
    having a conformance level available which allows a tool
    to get some kind of endorsement without meeting our aims is automatically a
    violation of our charter.
  unquote
  
  it all falls under the heading appropriate use, and what use a particular
  developer makes of ATAG is up to that developer...  only when they slap a
  conformance claim on their web site or on their boxes can we take action,
  although what form that action might take, i know not...  (cherchez la vache!)
  
  gregory
  
  
  --------------------------------------------------------
  He that lives on Hope, dies farting
       -- Benjamin Franklin, Poor Richard's Almanack, 1763
  --------------------------------------------------------
  Gregory J. Rosmaita <unagi69@concentric.net>
     WebMaster and Minister of Propaganda, VICUG NYC
          <http://www.hicom.net/~oedipus/vicug/index.html>
  --------------------------------------------------------
  

--Charles McCathieNevile    mailto:charles@w3.org  phone: +61 409 134 136
W3C Web Accessibility Initiative                    http://www.w3.org/WAI
21 Mitchell Street, Footscray, VIC 3011,  Australia (I've moved!)

Received on Tuesday, 30 November 1999 18:19:45 UTC