Fwd: Kynn's Proposal on Implementation Plans (was: To stray or not stray...)

I would like to endorse Kynn's suggestion that the generation and
maintenance of an "implementation planner's kit" become a work item.  

Along these lines here are some meta-planning notes:

Rob Neff has some "model procurement language" that should be in one of the
chunks of the kit (possibly after some scrubbing).

Ron Kelly at GSA has the unwelcome task of providing aid and guidance to
people throughout the U.S. Federal Government planning their implementation
of Section 508 of the Rehabilitation Act.  These two topics are not
synonymous, but there is a major block of the 508 standards that directly
address the Web, and a Web accessibility implementation planning kit would
be something they could a) contribute to b) share with their customers to
good effect.

When I say "contribute to," I think this is real.  If Ron understood the
nature of what Kynn suggests, I believe he could mobilize order-of-three
workers who would actually work for the team to develop the implementation
planning kit.  I say order of three because that is what I think he should
be asked to come up with.  The U.S. Federal presence should not dominate
the group, but it should be a strong presence.

Al

>Resent-Date: Fri, 5 May 2000 15:07:29 -0400 (EDT)
>X-Sender: kynn-edapta@mail.idyllmtn.com (Unverified)
>Date: Fri, 5 May 2000 12:01:02 -0700
>To: Melinda Morris-Black <melinda@ink.org>,
>        Accessibility Listserve <w3c-wai-ig@w3.org>
>From: Kynn Bartlett <kynn-edapta@idyllmtn.com>
>Subject: Kynn's Proposal on Implementation Plans (was: To stray or not
stray...)
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>At 12:58 PM -0500 5/05/2000, Melinda Morris-Black wrote:
>>The members have been bringing up some salient points that will affect
>>our education outreach efforts. I currently dread pointing people to the
>>W3C guidelines, as they are very intimidating to the uninitiated.
>
>Melinda, I share your concerns myself -- I feel that the WCAG
>is the -definitive- work but is not the best -introductory- work
>on the topic.  In fact, when I teach my online web accessibility
>class (http://www.hwg.org/services/classes/catalog/d201.html), I
>don't actually introduce the students to WCAG until week three of
>the six week course.
>
>>The more discussion I read on this issue, the more I think we need our
>>own guidelines, separate from the W3C.
>>Just my two cents. Any thoughts?
>
>In my opinion, there are two ways to go about this -- the wrong way
>and the right way.  These mainly differ in process and approach,
>rather than in the actual end product.
>
>THE WRONG WAY
>
>The wrong way to do this is to set up "our own guidelines" as something
>separate and distinct from the WAI guidelines -- as "something else"
>with no relationship to the WCAG, or worse, as an "alternative" to
>the WCAG.
>
>There is a definite benefit to both the "cause" and the "community"
>of having one clear, definitive document and message -- and that's
>embodied in the WCAG.  From a web designer's standpoint, if we are

>all learning from the same curriculum and the same source material,
>then our skills can be applied across many sites and many jobs.
>
>If, on the other hand, the message is "fractured", and there are
>a number of guidelines thought of as "competing" with each other,
>this will "dillute the market" and "confuse the message", which can
>lead to less understanding of what web accessibility is all about.
>
>So, we'd obviously like it if everyone did this...
>
>THE RIGHT WAY
>
>The right way is to *use* the WCAG to build your own *implementation
>plan* for web accessibility -- as I described yesterday in email
>to this list.  A web accessibility implementation plan should
>*always* be based on the WCAG at the core (although you should, in
>my opinion, -never- follow the WCAG's "de facto" single-A,
>double-AA, triple-AAA plans).
>
>For example, the HTML Writers Guild's accessibility standard is
>entirely dependent upon the WCAG, and that's done on purpose.  The
>HWG has no desire to set up our own "guidelines", but rather to
>establish for our internal use -how- we will use the existing
>guidelines.  Our depency on WCAG is clear -- see the policy at
>http://www.hwg.org/opcenter/policy/access.html  (Note also that the
>HWG policy "rewrites" WCAG for our audience, rather than just
>cutting-and-pasting.)
>
>HOW THE WAI CAN HELP
>
>The Web Accessibility Initiative -- through the Education and
>Outreach working group -- needs to actively encourage the use of
>the WCAG in exactly this way:  As the base building blocks that
>are used to produce web accessibility implementation plans which
>are appropriate for the organization or company in question.
>
>To that means, the E&O should consider drafting a document that
>lays out the steps necessary to construct such a plan (and yes,
>I'm willing to do the work on this -- and can we draft someone
>from IBM/SNS who worked on theirs?), and also consider linking
>to any known implementation plans which are based on the WCAG.
>
>THE INTERNAL CHALLENGE
>
>The big problem for us in the WAI will be when we actually have
>to confront the fact that we're going to say "it's okay to
>ignore certain parts of the WCAG."  But ultimately, that bitter
>taste is one we'll have to try soon enough, because any practical
>implementation of WAI guidelines will have to make that kind of
>decision.
>
>Rather than leaving it up to the individual implementors to make
>that decision (or simply trusting in the blind faith approach of
>the inadequate single-A, double-AA, triple-AAA conformance levels
>which do NOT work in the real world), the WAI E&O working group
>should be providing technical policy makers with the information
>and tools they need in order to set a reasonable and implementable
>goal for increasing the accessibility of their sites.
>
>--Kynn
>-- 
>--
>Kynn Bartlett <kynn@idyllmtn.com>
>http://www.kynn.com/
>

Received on Friday, 5 May 2000 19:23:35 UTC