- From: Charles McCathieNevile <charles@w3.org>
- Date: Mon, 19 Jul 1999 21:30:20 -0400 (EDT)
- To: thatch@us.ibm.com
- cc: Jason White <jasonw@ariel.ucs.unimelb.edu.au>, Web Content Accessibility Guidelines <w3c-wai-gl@w3.org>
I agree with both Rob and Jim, and I think Jason does too, that the guidelines specify requirements. In fact they are a technical cativity of the Web Accessibility and their goal is to capture the requirements for the design of web content which is accessible. The group has elected to do that in such a way as to give seveeral levels of priority for requirements, which makes these guidelines perhaps the most comprehensive such document currently available. I disagree with the examples Jim has chosen - there is cler and direct benefit for a large part of the web audience if tables are not used for layout control. It is to be expected that on the finer points of precisely how important everything is there will be some disagreement - this is why we work through the consensus process we use. As an editor of the Authoring Tool Accessibility Guidelines, currently in working draft (not now an 'early draft' but a relatively mature and resaonably stable working draft, which is still quite a way from the status of W3C Recommendation, of course) I too am concerned that we need appropriate input from developers and implementors, as well as users who are going to have to live with whatever is implemented. My personal feeling is that all three guidelines groups in fact have a reasonable balance, if not an always ideal one. At the end of the day what is required to know if something works or not is to do it. I hope that in the light of experience it will be possible to revise guidelines documents where appropriate, and I think if we know we will be able to do that it should be clearly stated. I do not think that adopting a set of guidelines "blindly" is a good idea, but somebody has to be first to do things in the "real world", there will never be the development experience needed to refine the process. (In authoring tools we are attempting to get as much experience as possible while producing the draft, but we also face the problem that we cannot afford to hold off forever simply because we don't have exhaustive experience - that is an impossibility). just my 2 centimes worth Charles McCN On Mon, 19 Jul 1999 thatch@us.ibm.com wrote: [among other things] I see this problem in IBM. We would like to be Double-A conformance but we cannot "require" of Web development, additional the work effort and time with no clear and direct benefit. There is clear and direct benefit from alt-text and from not using server-side maps. For example again, there is no significant direct benefit in not using tables for formatting. I agree with Rob; we must look at the guidelines as requirements. People will use them as requirements. EITAAC, the states and large companies will look to W3C and the Web Accessibility Initiative for the expertise in what to do to make the web accessible. Those making the laws or company rules may not have that expertise and will assume that thorough and balanced discussion would yield the best guidance. I worry as I listen to the discussion here and other lists, that the balance is lacking. The Web professionals, the tool and agent developers just do not have/take the time to participate.
Received on Monday, 19 July 1999 21:30:46 UTC