- From: Jason White <jasonw@ariel.ucs.unimelb.edu.au>
- Date: Mon, 17 Apr 2000 12:19:35 +1000 (EST)
- To: Web Content Accessibility Guidelines <w3c-wai-gl@w3.org>
There are two issues here: 1. As Gregg pointed out in the relevant teleconference, this working group has no mandate to comment on government regulations. Its individual members, needless to say, are free to do so in their personal capacities, and may employ whatever arguments they wish, discuss the issues in policy-oriented fora, etc. Thus there is no question of this working group, as such, commenting on regulations, or submitting such comments to governmental bodies in any jurisdiction. Technical guidelines and standards pertaining to the accessibility of web content, whether issued by governments or private parties, are of course relevant to this working group's activities and should be taken into account in that context. 2. The priority of checkpoint 5.3 was the outcome of detailed discussion and represented, at least as of the publication of WCAG 1.0, the considered opinion of the working group. I don't think it could be regarded as an erratum, and hence (assuming this to be so), it falls to be treated in the process of revising the guidelines. As part of that process, the checkpoint itself may be subsumed under a broader requirement (E.G. appropriate use of markup), and may not exist as a separate requirement except in the HTML techniques document. In these circumstances, the question of how priorities are to be addressed is yet to be considred. Given that the current status of checkpoint 5.3 represents a considered decision of the working group, it could not be reasonably treated in the errata, at least in my opinion; and for the sake of full disclosure, I should add, speaking in my personal capacity rather than as co-chair, that I believe the priority of checkpoint 5.3 was rightly decided.
Received on Sunday, 16 April 2000 22:20:08 UTC