- From: Jason White <jasonw@ariel.ucs.unimelb.edu.au>
- Date: Sun, 20 Aug 2000 10:29:53 +1000 (EST)
- To: Web Content Accessibility Guidelines <w3c-wai-gl@w3.org>
From the chairs: One of the most difficult aspects of our current work can be described as follows. The guidelines are heavily constrained and must meet many requirements simultaneously: - some content developers want immediate, practical and verifiable requirements relative to today's technologies; - others want to be able to apply the guidelines to emerging standards; - technology designers want from them a set of criteria to provide guidance as to what "accessible" design requires in the creation of new formats, protocols etc.; - policy advocates, likewise, want a definition of, and criteria for, accessibility; - and the W3C process imposes a fundamental demand for stability in the document that is supposed to become a W3C Recommendation. - Add to this the blurring of the distinction between the content developer and the language designer which results from the "extensibility" of most of the newer W3C formats, combined with the emergence of XML as the predominant markup language, Thus it quickly becomes clear that the guidelines need to adapt-and are adapting to a radically new environment. The trick will be in trying to keep all of these in mind as we proceed - and not to fix on just one or two. They make the problem difficult, but we can't ignore any of them and solve the problem.
Received on Saturday, 19 August 2000 20:31:43 UTC