Re: [DRAFT for Rapid Review] EOWG Comments on WCAG 2.0 "About Baseline" info page

At 06:51 PM 5/5/2006, Judy Brewer wrote:

>Dear EOWG Participants:
>
>In our teleconference today we came up with the following five 
>comments on the "About Baseline" document. Instead of our usual 
>practice of accumulating several meetings' worth of comments before 
>sending them over to the WCAG WG, we will be sending this first 
>batch of comments next week due to the timeline of the review already underway.
>
>Please review these draft comments by COB (close of business) 
>Tuesday, 9 May, and reply back to the EOWG list if you do *not* 
>agree with any of the following.
>
>Following our discussion today, I edited the following statements 
>slightly for clarity. I've also changed the order of the comments 
>around so they make more sense as a sequence.
>
>Thank you,
>
>- Judy
>
>[Remember, the following is a DRAFT for EOWG review first!]
>
>EOWG reviewed the baseline document 
>http://www.w3.org/WAI/WCAG20/baseline/ on 5 May 2006. Most of us had 
>at least some difficulty understanding it, and when we compared our 
>resulting understandings of the baseline concept, there were 
>considerable differences in what we understood from the document. We 
>therefore recommend the following revisions to "About Baseline..." 
>at your ealiest opportunity, even while WCAG 2.0 is in Last Call.
>
>We feel that these changes would not change the normative 
>understanding of conformance, but that they would make the concept 
>of baseline easier to understand while WCAG 2.0 is under review, and 
>thus help ensure more useful review comments on WCAG 2.0. Thank you 
>for your consideration of these comments.
>
>1. Re-structure the document so that there is:
>- a short first section which gives you the basics of what baseline 
>is, without any background or examples;
>- then an explanation of essential things needed to implement the 
>baseline concept, including examples;
>- and finally a section such as an appendix that might be set up 
>like a Q/A, and would include other things that people may be 
>wondering about such as why UAAG wasn't used as the baseline, and 
>selected other important material from the background.
>
>2. Shorten the entire "about baseline" document by as much as half, 
>in order to greatly increase the chance that this material will be 
>read and used. This shortening could be achieved by a combination of 
>the restructuring suggestions in several of our comments here, plus 
>a substantial rewriting of the text to focus less on discussion of 
>rationales and approaches, and more on concise practical information 
>that instructs the reader how to apply the baseline concept to their 
>use of WCAG 2.0.
>
>3. Take the concepts from the first three paragraphs of the "What is 
>a baseline" section; simplify them (try just one or two short, 
>simple paragraphs); and make them an introduction to put at the very 
>beginning of the "About Baseline" document. If this can be done in a 
>way that includes simple statements about what baseline is (for 
>instance, in a bulleted list, or something equally terse and clear), 
>then also add a brief statement that baseline is not browser or 
>assistive technology specifications. But don't add a statement about 
>what it isn't unless the introduction already includes a clear 
>statement of what it is.
>
>4. Add a prominent link from the introduction of the baseline section

http://www.w3.org/TR/WCAG20/conformance.html#baseline

>to the conformance section of WCAG 2.0, and remove redundant info 
>about conformance from the baseline document itself. (Note that, for 
>now, we are not recommending the removal of information about 
>baseline from the conformance section of WCAG 2.0.)

I don't expect we'd recommend such removal.


>5. Rename the "Background" section of "About baseline..." to 
>something such as "Why baseline is needed" or "Why baseline is 
>useful"; then shorten it by about 2/3 and change the perspective 
>from "this is what the WG did" to "this is why baseline is needed, 
>and what it gets you."
>
>###
>
>
>--
>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 Saturday, 6 May 2006 02:33:42 UTC