Use of term “Format” and relationship with WCAG (related to Bugs #1196, #1116, #1197-checkpoint 2.1)

On the April 18th call I took an action to address the following bug and 
just kept going from there:

Bug1197: ...Guideline 2.1, "Support formats that enable the creation of 
Web content that conforms to WCAG": Even after considerable discussion, 
and following the link to the definition, we were not entirely clear 
what is meant by "format" here. For instance, we were wondering whether 
it was related to markup languages, or to doc type schemas, or something 
else. Please clarify here and then reinforce that in the glossary....

Proposed actions:

[Action: 1] Replace “format” with the WCAG 2.0 term "technology" which 
is defined as:

technology
    A technology is a:
       - markup or programming language
       - application Programming Interface (API)
       - or communication protocol

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[Action 2:] Introduce a new term, "technology-specific WCAG benchmark", 
to refer to the document that ATAG 2.0 requires evaluators to specify in 
the conformance profile. (Note: We used to call this a WCAG Techniques 
document, but techniques documents are non-normative. The nature of the 
document is actually closer to that of a WCAG conformance claim, except 
that the “benchmark” document covers a range of potential outputs from 
an authoring tool rather than some particular Web content as a WCAG 
conformance claim does.

The term would then be defined in its own sub-section of the conformance 
section. The definition would hit these key points:

1) a benchmark document must specify the version of WCAG used.

2) a benchmark document can specify one or more technologies used 
together (e.g. plain HTML or HTML + CSS or SVG + PNG images, etc.)

3) the benchmark document becomes *normative* for a particular 
evaluation by the act of the evaluator including a reference to the 
benchmark URI in the ATAG 2.0 conformance profile.

4) the benchmark document can be created by any person or organization 
(although the AUWG does suggest checking to see if a benchmark document 
has already been published by W3C or another technology developer, 
before creating a new one).

5) the benchmark document specifies a target WCAG conformance level 
(single-"A", double-"A", or triple-"A") that the creator of the 
benchmark is claiming the Web content would conform with if all of the 
benchmark requirements are met. If the tool allows the author to choose 
between different WCAG levels, then each level needs its own benchmark 
document.

6) for each success criteria in *WCAG* that is required by the target 
WCAG conformance level set in (5), the benchmark document must provide 
either at least one requirement for meeting the success criteria or an 
explanation of why that success criteria is not applicable to the 
technology in question. The AUWG suggests the following documents are 
relevant when creating a benchmark: WCAG guidelines, "WCAG General 
techniques" document, "WCAG technology-specific techniques" document (if 
one exists for the technology in question). [also: Wendy C. say WCAG-GL 
might create a doc on how to write WCAG Techniques, which would also be 
relevant here]

7) the benchmark document must be publicly published (the URI will 
appear in the conformance profile) where it will be open to public and 
market scrutiny.

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[Action 3:] In checkpoint 2.1, replace "format" with "technology" and 
use the new term "technology-specific WCAG benchmark", resulting in:

2.1 Support *technologies* that enable the creation of Web content that 
conforms to *WCAG*. [Priority 1]

Rationale: *Technologies* with published *technology-specific WCAG 
benchmark* documents facilitate the creation of Web content that can be 
assessed for accessibility with *WCAG*.

Success Criteria:

- Any authoring tool that chooses the Web content *technology* for the 
author (i.e. a default document *markup language*) must always choose 
technologies for which a published *technology-specific WCAG benchmark* 
exists.
- Any authoring tool that allows authors to choose the Web content 
*technology* must always support at least one technology for which a 
published *technology-specific WCAG benchmark* exists and always give 
*prominence* to those formats.

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[Action 4:] In the conformance profile section, make related changes. So 
that it now reads (including the user agent point proposed in < 
http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/w3c-wai-au/2005AprJun/0007.html >:

1. Required: The date of the conformance claim.
2. Required: The version and URI of the Authoring Tool Accessibility 
Guidelines 2.0 document that was used for the evaluation.
3. Required: The conformance level satisfied (choose one of: "A", 
"Double-A", or "Triple-A")
4. Required: The version and URI of the Web Content Accessibility 
Guidelines document that is the basis for any of the technology-specific 
WCAG benchmarks used for this evaluation.
( e.g. "Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 2.0 Working Draft, 
http://www.w3.org/TR/WCAG20/)"
5. Required: The technologies produced by the authoring tool that are 
covered by the evaluation. For each technology included, the URI of a 
technology-specific WCAG benchmark document must be provided.
(e.g. "HTML4.01, http://www.sample.org/html401_wcag20_benchmark.html)"
6a. Required for Web-based Authoring Tools: The name and version number
of the user agent(s) on which the authoring tool was evaluated for
conformance.
6b. Required for non-Web-based Authoring Tools: The name and version 
number of the operating system platform on which the authoring tool was 
evaluated for conformance.
7. Optional: A description of the authoring tool that identifies the 
types of authoring tool functions that are present in the tool. Choose 
one or more of: (a) Code-level authoring functions, (b) WYSIWYG 
("What-you-see-is-what-you-get") authoring functions, (c) object 
oriented authoring functions, and (d) indirect authoring functions.

In Limbo: Required: The title/version for the ISO-TS-16071 document that 
was used as the benchmark for determining the level of Authoring 
Interface Checkpoints Relative to ISO-TS-16071: e.g. "ISO TS 16071:2003"

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Cheers,
Jan

-- 
Jan Richards, M.Sc.
User Interface Design Specialist
Adaptive Technology Resource Centre (ATRC), University of Toronto

   Email: jan.richards@utoronto.ca
   Web:   http://jan.atrc.utoronto.ca
   Phone: 416-946-7060
   Fax:   416-971-2896

Received on Thursday, 21 April 2005 15:12:07 UTC