Re: "at a Minimum"

I have added responses to each of the issues raised, becuase I think this is
an important discussion. I am still in favour of including some statement of
minimum requirements in most checkpoints, although I think there are valid
concerns raised about what those should contain and say...

cheers

(my comments interspersed - all paras start "CMN")

Charles

On Thu, 26 Apr 2001, 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.

CMN There are two issues here. One is lowering the bar - I like the way that
some of these proposed texts have "...more useful tools will..." stuff as
well.

CMN The second issue is about interpretation of the guidelines. There is no
company or product group that knows better than the working group what the
working group was trying to achieve in a particular part of the
specification. It is our job to make it as clear as possible what we meant,
and specifying what needs to be done, and what is just something that better
products might offer. A product group, or policy group, or whoever, then have
the best information we can give them, along with the other information they
use which is their own expertise.

  *	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.

CMN Correct.

  *	"The minimum" for one product could be something totally
  different than the WAIs suggestion as the minimum, does that mean it's
  wrong?  Even if ATAG doesn't think so, others may.

CMN I am not so convinced. Are you suggesting that in fact there is some
group who knows what the ATAG means better than the working group who wrote
it? There may be faillings in teh way that we express them - this is why we
produce drafts, and ask for review.

  *	Will products have to implement "the minimum" even if they have
  "an advanced" solution?

CMN The minimum requirements should be functional requirements, not
particular implementation strategies. Any solution that provides teh
appropriate functionality meets the "minimum", possibly as well as doing
other things.

Received on Saturday, 28 April 2001 23:59:33 UTC