UPDATED DRAFT: EOWG Comments on WCAG 2.0 and Techniques

DRAFT: EOWG Comments on Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 2.0, and 
related Techniques documents, 30 July 2004 Working Drafts

NOTE: This is a DRAFT document and should not be referenced.

The Education and Outreach Working Group (EOWG) [will] offer[s] the 
following comments on the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 2.0 30 July 
2004 Working Draft and related Techniques documents. These DRAFT comments 
derive from discussions held at EOWG teleconferences on 27 August and 3 
September 2004.

1. It is difficult to follow the transition directly from the guidelines to 
the success criteria. It would be helpful to have an explanation of the 
guideline available immediately following the text of the guideline, 
especially for people new to Web accessibility. Or alternatively each 
guideline should include a brief introduction to the guideline. Perhaps 
these explanations could be handled by having different views of the 
guidelines available.

2. Be careful about the use of jargon. Either introduce the terms when 
first used, or provide a clear link to an explanation in the glossary. 
Terms which may need introduction but for which it appeared no explanation 
was available, or was not available where it would have been most helpful, 
include: user agent, success criteria, full range of disabilities, 
multimedia, operable, spatial pattern threshhold. With regard to "spatial 
pattern threshhold," it would be helpful to separate out the definition, 
perhaps by a box, from the individual success criteria.

3. When explaning how to read this document, describe what the terms 
"informative" and "normative" signify within the format of the guidelines.

4. Change or clarify the invisible/visible distinction. If the WCAG Working 
Group does not keep this as part of the format, it would be good to retain 
the information somehow, such as by integrating it into the text.

5. Rename the section entitled "How to read this document" to "How to read 
this set of documents."

6. In the section on "how to read the document," nest the sequence of items 
in the top layer overview to better match the structure of the document.

7. Better indicate and explain the navigation between the different 
documents (guidelines, gateway, techniques) including the eventual linking 
to, partial repetition of, or integrating of material from the overview. 
EOWG realizes that WCAG WG is working on changes in this area.

8. Add more links to facilitate jumping back and forth between related 
sections within the document.

9. The blue boxes help differentiate content within the document but the 
strength of the blue is distracting for some people and not visible to 
other people. For the visual formatting, try other ways of differentiation, 
such as indentation of the content in those sections.

10. For conformance, use the term "levels" rather than A, AA, AAA.

11. The structure of the conformance model is clearer, but the description 
of the conformance levels needs to be stated more clearly.

12. The term and concept of conformance would benefit from an introduction 
or explanation.

13. The term "authored unit" was unfamiliar and confusing to EOWG 
participants, even after reading the definition. EOWG discussed some 
possible other terms and could not come up with a better alternative at 
this time. We also found potential problems with the use of the terms 
"material," "set of material," "author," and "URI" in this section. 
Clarification question: is it WCAG WG's intent that a conformance claim 
could be made about a single resource, such as an image, or an audio file? 
Also EOWG noted that the definition imported from device independence seems 
to exclude textual content.

14. It would be helpful to make a clearer transition from the introductory 
material into the guidelines themselves.

15. For glossary terms, avoid using the same term as part of the definition 
of a term, or at least don't bold-face the term when re-using it. Note that 
the definition of "programmatically located" re-uses the term 
"programmatically located" but without ever explaining what 
"programmatically" means. Also, the editorial note about programatically 
located should go into the glossary.

16. Some descriptive content currently embedded in the editorial notes 
should be retained, in some cases they are better than existing definitions.

17. The content of appendix C, relating to WCAG 1.0 to 2.0 transition, 
might be better as part of another document, but in any case should be much 
more clearly and strongly linked to from the beginning of the WCAG 2.0 
document. Note that having this content in a separate document from WCAG 
2.0 would allow easier updating. It seems more important to highlight how 
WCAG 1.0 and 2.0 are different, including the mapping of the actual 
technical differences between the specifications, and less of the history 
of how WCAG 2.0 evollved.

Comments on Techniques Documents

1. There is a bug in the printing font size on the techniques documents. 
Check the printing style on techniques style sheet. Also be careful of the 
contrast in example boxes.

2. Consider whether the techniques documents should have their own 
glossaries, or explain terms when first using it. Be careful about the 
sequence of when a term is first used and when it is defined.

3. Consider making the glossary a module within the set of guidelines & 
techniques documents, rather than explicitly part of the guidelines 
document, and consider making enabling user-defined subsets of the glossary.

4. Use words rather than code for link text in the techniques documents.

5. Regularize and simplify the formats of the gateway & techniques documents.



-- 
Judy Brewer    +1.617.258.9741    http://www.w3.org/WAI
Director, Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI), World Wide Web Consortium (W3C)
MIT/CSAIL Building 32-G530
32 Vassar Street
Cambridge, MA,  02139,  USA

Received on Friday, 10 September 2004 12:26:09 UTC