Decision Support in ATAG

In reviewing the state of Guideline B at the moment I have one 
concern, we seem to have lost one important form of support for 
creating accessible content.

Originally we had the following abstract principles in part B:
1) if the tool makes decisions for the author, make sure those 
decisions are accessible ones (automatic processes, automatically 
generated content, etc.)
2) provide guidance, information and support to enable the author to 
make *initial* decisions that lead to accessible content
3) enable the author to check that the content is accessible
4) enable the author to repair any content that is found not to be accessible
5) make sure that this support is well integrated into the user 
experience including the work flow

We seem to have lost principle 2, the initial decision support. We 
help the author check things once the decision is made, we help them 
repair things when they have determined that they have made a 
mistake, but we have no initial guidance or problem prevention - to 
help them make the right decisions from the start or avoid 
inaccessible choices.

I therefore propose we include the following in B.2.1 -

"B.2.1.X Provide Decision Support: If the authoring tool presents 
choices to the author(s), provide information to assist the author in 
making choices that enable the content to conform to WCAG 2.0. (Level 
A) "

We don't want to be prescriptive or didactic about how this is done. 
The techniques document would list a range of techniques for 
providing this decision support whether it is some way of indicating 
which choices are accessible and which are not, or some way of 
indicating the importance and priority of taking certain steps from 
an accessibility perspective.

Jutta

Received on Monday, 13 July 2009 16:11:08 UTC