Re: Fwd: EOWG discussion questions for WCAG 2.0 Working Draft

At 09:22 AM 8/14/2003 -0700, William Loughborough wrote:
>At 10:30 AM 8/14/2003 -0400, Judy Brewer wrote:
>>5. Does the conformance model appear to be:
>>- clearly defined and implementable?
>
>The fine line between EO advice about clarity, etc. and the WG role in 
>deciding what the conformance model should be is IMO being breached by 
>discussions about the conformance model itself, rather than about its 
>clarity and such.

There are many perspectives from which the conformance model in WCAG 2.0 
can be examined:
- is the conformance model understandable and usable by a content developer;
- is it understandable and usable by a Web site designer or developer;
- is it understandable by an authoring tool developer who is trying to 
develop ATAG-conformant tools that produce WCAG-conformant documents;
- is it understandable and usable by someone in charge of an organization's 
Web site policy who is trying to set some goals for accessibility;
- is it understandable and useful for a representative of a disability 
organization who is trying to determine why various governmental, 
commercial or non-profit Web sites may or may not be accessible to people 
with disabilities;
- etc.

Presumably the WCAG WG is doing their best to think about all of those 
audiences while they write WCAG 2.0, but part of EOWG's work includes 
helping WCAG WG communicate their intentions to certain of those audiences 
as clearly as possible.

Given that the conformance model is relatively new and still evolving, and 
their draft includes several questions regarding how the conformance model 
might best be defined, it seems a worthwhile exercise to examine how 
they're communicating their conformance concept to different audiences, and 
how well that concept might be accepted and usable by some of those audiences.

- Judy

>When I was in WG for WCAG it was clear that the change from P1 levels to 
>something else was on the agenda and that WHATEVER was decided on would 
>call for exactly the same kinds of arguments that are going on now because 
>of these changes.
>
>I really believe that we should leave that up to their WG. It is both a 
>can of worms and a rat hole. I propose that we deal exclusively with the 
>presentation of the conformance model and not with its content, else we be 
>drawn down the same rat hole.
>
>--
>Love.
>
>It's Bad Luck to be Superstitious!

-- 
Judy Brewer    +1.617.258.9741    http://www.w3.org/WAI
Director, Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI), World Wide Web Consortium (W3C)
MIT/LCS Room NE43-355, 200 Technology Square, Cambridge, MA,  02139,  USA

Received on Friday, 15 August 2003 01:10:23 UTC