Please review: Techniques for Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 1.0

The Web Content Accessibility Guidelines Working Group (WCAG WG) [1] has 
been working on the Techniques For Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 
[2]. This document was last released as a W3C Note when the Web Content 
Accessibility Guidelines 1.0 (WCAG 1.0) [3] became a W3C Recommendation 5 
May 1999. At that time the Techniques document was a single document. Over 
the course of the last few months we have divided that document into 3 
separate chapters:
Techniques for Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 1.0
HTML Techniques for Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 1.0
CSS Techniques for Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 1.0

Together, these documents describe the techniques that Web content authors 
(developers of Web sites) should use to conform to the WCAG 1.0 checkpoints.

The WCAG WG believes this document is ready to supercede the previous Note 
that was published 5 May 1999 [4]. However, the group would like comments 
from WAI IG before moving forward.

This document is published as a Note rather than going through the 
Recommendation track because it is non-normative (it is informative rather 
than normative). In other words, it provides information about how to 
conform to a normative document.  In this case, the normative document is 
WCAG 1.0.   We intend to update the techniques documents as new 
technologies are introduced and as new techniques evolve. For example over 
the course of the next several months the WCAG WG anticipates adding 
chapters for SMIL (Synchronized Multimedia Integration Language), SVG 
(Scalable Vector Graphics), and for a few non-W3C technologies. We also 
expect to add more HTML, CSS and scripting techniques to those that are 
already included in these techniques documents. We are also discussing 
clearer navigation mechanisms between the techniques documents, such as a 
site map and a navigation side-bar similar to the new W3C home page.

However, there is the need to update the current Note with the advances we 
have made thus far. Primarily, we have corrected some errors that existed 
in the 5 May 1999 release and updated the Techniques per discussions in the 
Working Group that have occurred since the release of WCAG 1.0.

We would appreciate any comments that you may have. This review period will 
end Tuesday, August 15, 2000. Please send review comments before that date 
to w3c-wai-gl@w3.org. Archives for this list are at 
http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/w3c-wai-gl/.

Thank you in advance,
The Web Content Accessibility Guidelines Working Group

[1] http://www.w3.org/WAI/GL/
[2] http://www.w3.org/WAI/GL/WD-WCAG10-TECHS-20000727/
[3] http://www.w3.org/TR/WCAG10
[4] http://www.w3.org/TR/WCAG10-TECHS

--
wendy a chisholm
world wide web consortium
web accessibility initiative
madison, wi usa
tel: +1 608 663 6346
/--

Received on Thursday, 27 July 2000 19:32:06 UTC