Glossary and WCAG 2

Hi all,

As Charles McCathieNevile has said, in the group of translations of the
SIDAR (http://www.sidar.org) we have translated the Glossary gathered by
Harvey Bingham. As a new version of the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines
will be published, maybe it is the appropriate moment to also revise the
definitions of some terms, for example:

"Accessible: Content is accessible when it may be used by someone with a
disability."

I believe that this definition is incomplete since, it doesn't include those
people that don't have a deficiency but that they are in a similar situation
to those that they have it, for example, to be in a noisy atmosphere, to
have antiquated hardware or devices different to a PC, etc.

Another case is the one that appears in the appendix B - Glossary of the Web
Content Accessibility Guidelines 1.0, in the definition of "Equivalent"
says:

"Equivalent information may be provided in a number of ways, including
through attributes (e.g., a text value for the "alt" attribute in HTML and
SMIL), as part of element content (e.g., the OBJECT in HTML), as part of the
document's prose, or via a linked document (e.g., designated by the
"longdesc" attribute in HTML or a description link). Depending on the
complexity of the equivalent, it may be necessary to combine techniques
(e.g., use "alt" for an abbreviated equivalent, useful to familiar readers,
in addition to "longdesc" for a link to more complete information, useful to
first-time readers). The details of how and when to provide equivalent
information are part of the Techniques Document ([TECHNIQUES]). "

Here the problem is not in the definition in itself, is in the example that
explains the use of the alternative text together with the attribute
"longdesc". I Believe that it is not that the description of an image in a
document separated to the one that aims the "longdesc" or the "D" link it is
"useful to first-time readers", I believe that it is useful for all the
users that cannot decode the image in a given moment for any reason, besides
being fundamental, in some cases, for those that can never make it, to be
blind.

Regards,
Emmanuelle Gutiérrez y Restrepo
mailto:coordina@sidar.org
http://www.sidar.org