Re: "at a Minimum"

>>At 08:20 2001-04-26 -0700, Heather Swayne wrote:
>>With regard to the proposed changes for ATAG v2.  I have now talked with
>>several Product Groups here at MS, and the general feeling is that they
>>do not like the idea of including "at a minimum" within any of the
>>guidelines or sub text.
>>
>>Some examples of their concerns:
>>*       Including text like "at a minimum could lower the bar, to allow
>>product groups to only do that minimum level of work.  As apposed to
>>allowing individual companies to define their own minimum, or standard,
>>that they want product groups to follow.
>
>A minimum is just that. You are always free to have a "higher" standard.
>
>>*       ATAG should not be telling product groups how to implement
>>guidelines.  The techniques document should be used to show examples of
>>how a range of products met a given guideline.
>
>Yes. Techniques give only suggestions for how something could be
implemented. Only guidelines should >use "at minimum".

When you said "guidelines or sub text" Heather, did you mean to say ATAG or
the techniques or both?

I've found at IBM that I do in fact have to suggest "at a minimum" also for
techniques, using phrases like: at a minimum one or more of the following
techniques need to be implemented to meet the accessibility standard for x
y z.

Please see examples in the IBM Hardware Accessibility checklist at
http://www.ibm.com/able/accesshardware.html   These were just updated,
software and web will be up on the site soon as well.

I do NOT recommend this for ATAG, it's IBM, 508, and others that get to
decide what part of the W3C standard that they want to "at a minimum"
implement.

Regards,
Phill Jenkins
IBM Research Division - Accessibility Center

Received on Thursday, 26 April 2001 17:45:21 UTC