RE: Concerns and Comments on WCAG 2.0

Conformance and Definition of L1, L2 and L3 for success criteria

For L1 and L2, the chief distinction is between 'minimum level' and
'enhanced level' of accessibility as the second factor (reasonably applies
to all Web content)  is common.
I contend that the terms 'minimum' and enhanced' cannot be viewed in a
vacuum without a context. For a user with particular kind of vision
impairment (VI), ability to manipulate background / foreground colors may
provide minimum accessibility and ability to manipulate text size may
provide enhanced level of accessibility. For another person with VI, both of
above adjustments or just the second one may be needed to provide minimum
accessibility.
Question: So in what context is the level determined?
Proposal: Integrate the baseline into the definition of L1, L2 etc. This
will mean that SC at L1 exploit all accessibility features available  in the
baseline technology and this provides the necessary context.  
In doing so the WG will be able to justify its statement: 'WG believes that
all success criteria of WCAG 2.0 are essential for some people' and yet not
say that one checkpoint is more important than another like in WCAG 1.0.

At present obviously  an SC at L1 is more important than one at L2 because
the former is supposed to provide 'minimum accessibility'.

Sailesh Panchang
Senior Accessibility Engineer
Deque Systems Inc. (www.deque.com)
11180 Sunrise Valley Drive, Suite #400,
Reston VA 20191
Phone: 703-225-0380 (ext 105)
E-mail: sailesh.panchang@deque.com

Received on Friday, 16 June 2006 17:59:12 UTC