notes for today's call

Hello all,

I thought these notes might be helpful for others who are trying to 
understand this week's issues.  These are the notes that I've taken for 
myself to prepare for this week's meeting.

--wendy

--
7.4
<proposal>
8. Clarification of checkpoint 7.4
Added: xx August 2000
Type: Clarification
Refers to: Checkpoint 7.4 of 5 May 1999 version
Description (and correction): Checkpoint 7.4 says,
<blockquote>
Until user agents provide the ability to stop the refresh, do not create 
periodically auto-refreshing pages. [Priority 2] For example, in HTML, 
don't cause pages to auto-refresh with "HTTP-EQUIV=refresh" until user 
agents allow users to turn off the feature.
</blockquote>
This checkpoint is trying to address two issues:
1. Disorientation due to unexpected changes in content. Users should expect 
changes in content when they follow a link or submit a form. However, the 
author may cause unexpected changes to content by using scripts or other 
markup. The author should inform the user of changes that will occur 
without explicit user interaction.
For example, if pressing a submit button will cause an intermediate page to 
appear before the final results are displayed, inform the user in advance. 
In short, warn the user of what will happen without their explicit interaction.
2. Response time not long enough to interact or comprehend the content 
before it changes. To ensure that users can interact with and understand 
content in a time frame suitable to their needs, do not cause automatic 
content changes at regular intervals (such as a page of stock quotes that 
is updated every 3 minutes).
There is an "until user agents" clause that is not yet satisfied for this 
checkpoint. Note that the User Agent Accessibility Guidelines will require 
user agents to provide the ability for users to update pages manually.
</proposal>

Kynn raises a good point that all periodically refreshing pages are 
outlawed by this checkpoint.  He creates a good example of how one could 
create something that appears to be accessible.  I would like to get 
feedback on a live example to see what people have to say. Send it to IG, 
webwatch, access-l, etc. for review.

Al has raised issues with the user agent piece of this, primarily that 
there is a misstatement about the UAAG requirement for manual updates and 
that we ought to provide more info about user agents satisfying the "until 
user agent" clause. i'm waiting for clarification on his suggestions.

----
WCAG 2.0 organization

Ian proposed [1] that we have guidelines, checkpoints, and then several 
technology-specific documents that provide a checklist for how to apply the 
checkpoints to the specific technology (technology profiles).  The 
Guidelines/checkpoints, and technology profiles are normative.  He also 
suggested that to conform, one would "claim conformance to WCAG 2.0 for 
HTML with a URI that designates this document." rather than to the 
Guidelines/checkpoints.  Ian also states [2] that, "There is no requirement 
at W3C that a Recommendation have conformance provisions, so we can publish 
a set of fairly abstract principles that can be the basis for later 
technology specific profiles."

Rob asks if there will be a "master compliance matrix between the WCAG, 
User Agent, Page Authoring and what else are we missing" to be used by 
people to record compliance testing that could be posted to the web as a 
rating sheet. [3] I've asked him to clarify how this would look and who 
would fill it out.

Jason is concerned that Ian's proposal would not scale as new technologies 
are developed.  [4]  How would one conform to WCAG if they are using a 
technology that does not have a WCAG profile?

Jason is also concerned that we have a variety of audiences and goals and 
that we need to keep all of this in mind as we move forward. [5]

Matt suggests [6]:
- a list of general principles (Recommendation)
- technology-specific checkpoints (Note)
- conformance is based on the tech-specific checkpoints where they exist, 
and on the general checkpoints where they do not.
Backing up his argument with the following statement: In the absence of a 
spec for everything under the sun, requiring conformance with the 
higher-level rules seems like a fair compromise.

Charles backs up Matt's proposal by saying that the current organization 
that exists (WCAG 1.0, ATAG 1.0) doesn't seem broken, so let's reuse it. [7]

Kynn suggests that Markup Language Accessibility Guidelines be a separate 
document and not something we try to tackle with WCAG 2.0. [8]

[1] http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/w3c-wai-gl/2000JulSep/0265.html
[2] http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/w3c-wai-gl/2000JulSep/0270.html
[3] http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/w3c-wai-gl/2000JulSep/0274.html
[4] http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/w3c-wai-gl/2000JulSep/0275.html
[5] http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/w3c-wai-gl/2000JulSep/0277.html
[6] http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/w3c-wai-gl/2000JulSep/0278.html
[7] http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/w3c-wai-gl/2000JulSep/0279.html
[8] http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/w3c-wai-gl/2000JulSep/0280.html

--
Draft of technology-specific checkpoints

Published 23 August 2000 [1]
William sent several comments. [2]

[1] http://www.w3.org/WAI/GL/WCAG20/checkpoints.html
[2] http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/w3c-wai-gl/2000JulSep/0287.html

--
Proposal to make use of classes more accessible

Len Kasday sent a proposal for how to use class/css to provide the 
semantics of the use of class to users who can not see the visual 
distinctions. [1]
Dave Pawson seems to support, also offers a suggestion for how to extend 
the proposal to make it more useful. [2]
William writes (in a different thread) that an important principle has been 
identified but he can't express it. [3]  Sighted users use the visual 
distinctions created by using class to format elements to quickly skim a 
document, users who are blind do not have this advantage (core of Len's 
proposal).  How can we capture this as a principle in WCAG?

[1] http://www.w3.org/WAI/ER/IG/classuse.html
[2] http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/w3c-wai-gl/2000JulSep/0292.html
[3] http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/w3c-wai-gl/2000JulSep/0291.html
--
wendy a chisholm
world wide web consortium
web accessibility initiative
madison, wi usa
tel: +1 608 663 6346
/--