Regulation and implementability Re: A proposal for changing the guidelines

There are different standards of implementable in different cultures. For
example, in the US as I understand it (I could be wrong on all this) an
agency covered by the ADA is required to make accommodations unless it would
impose an undue burden. In Australia, a private agency can claim an exemption
from the requirement not to discriminate unless it would pose an undue
burden, but a public (government owned) agency cannot, unless it is actually
not possible to make an accommodation.

Charles McCN

On Mon, 13 Mar 2000, Robert Neff wrote:

  if we throw out the reference to law and focus on what is implementable and
  reachable.  Case in point the Software Engineering Institute's Capabilty
  Maturity Model is a metric for how well your company meets their
  requirements.  the rating level is zero (chaos) to 5.  Two means you have
  some practices in place that can be measured and save rework.
  
  Unfortunately, Level 5 is the Zenith and only a handful of companies after
  ten-ish years has reached this.  As a person who has worked in level 2 and
  has been instructed to level three, i ask, " Is this what I as a company
  want to obtain?"  The cost and burden to reach this is very high and how
  does it help my business?  What is the net? Most government contracts
  require at least level three - if i participate in this market.  The
  overhead to be a level 3 and 5 is very high as your people must be trained
  to it and in our job market, workers hop jobs very fast.
  
  There are those who beleive that the level five is an artificial standard
  that is not needed to meet business objectives, therefore there is no value
  added.
  
  In universal design, there is some leverage with developers that are a part
  of a government, but we must also be concerned about developers in
  non-government markets.  So it seems there will be more buy-in from one
  market segment versus another.  This is not the purpose of WCAG and
  universla design but it may be the result.
  
  I think this is the wrong approach.  We need a universal design standard
  that is implementable across all developer segments and are supported by
  tools.  Then as toolsets and agents meet the other guidelines, then they can
  be tightened.
  
  You must provide a guideline that supports rapid application development and
  a very fast time to market or else you will not get buy-inform the single
  most community you need - developers and managers.
  
  
  ----- Original Message -----
  From: Charles McCathieNevile <charles@w3.org>
  To: Gregg Vanderheiden <gv@trace.wisc.edu>
  Cc: <w3c-wai-gl@w3.org>
  Sent: Monday, March 13, 2000 10:48 AM
  Subject: RE: A proposal for changing the guidelines
  
  
  > I agree that we should think this through. And I think we should conclude
  (in
  > my humble, but considered opinion) that it is inappropriate for a body
  which
  > has undertaken the task of finding out what (internationally) are the
  > requirements for accessibility of the web to add to the onerous task the
  > requirement of fitting in with International law, an area in which most of
  us
  > are woefully ignorant. Slightly less appropriate, of course, would be to
  base
  > our work on the law of a couple of countries just because we know it
  better.
  >
  > The education and outreach group has a specific mission to develop
  materials
  > and raise awareness among policy makers. Perhaps we should be providing
  them
  > with more feedback if we feel that there are specific areas that need to
  be
  > looked at differently from a policy perspective than from an accessibility
  > perspective. If we know of a particular country that is going to make a
  > decision we think is inappropriate, then those of us who are citizens of
  that
  > country, and the EO group as a representative of W3C, should make
  submissions
  > to the relevant bodies. But I seriously doubt we know enough about law and
  > policy around the world to be able to incorporate it into the priority
  scheme
  > in a helpful way, especially given the constant change both in it and in
  the
  > state of the art.
  >
  > cheers
  >
  > Charles McCN
  >
  > On Mon, 13 Mar 2000, Gregg Vanderheiden wrote:
  >
  >   Some short notes and an important call....
  >
  >   Short Notes (opinions not rulings)
  >
  >   4) We should look again at the interaction of our priority guidelines
  and
  >   regulations.   In the past our priorities have been determined basically
  by
  >   what makes a page accessible.... Not by its ease of implementation.
  If
  >   regulations are going to say Priority 1 and 2  -  then we need to think
  this
  >   through carefully.  I hate to say this but I think we do.
  >
  >
  

--
Charles McCathieNevile    mailto:charles@w3.org    phone: +61 (0) 409 134 136
W3C Web Accessibility Initiative                      http://www.w3.org/WAI
Location: I-cubed, 110 Victoria Street, Carlton VIC 3053
Postal: GPO Box 2476V, Melbourne 3001,  Australia

Received on Tuesday, 14 March 2000 00:05:23 UTC