- From: Charles McCathieNevile <charles@w3.org>
- Date: Mon, 30 Apr 2001 21:52:51 -0400 (EDT)
- To: Paul Bohman <paulb@cpd2.usu.edu>
- cc: Matt May <mcmay@bestkungfu.com>, Web Content Accessibility Guidelines Working Group <w3c-wai-gl@w3.org>
There are a few ways of sppecifying stuff that come to mind: You can underspecify - make it short and lean, and assumme people interpret it correctly - this is risky because people don't. You can write everything into the specification, but the risk of this is a huge document that people are frightened to read. This is one approach that is used in making policies. You can combine these two by chopping out the hard stuff, and this has been done in some policies, but I think it often amounts to setting lower goals - in Accessibility this doesn't seem to be our goal. Another approach - the way I understand the structure of our guidelines, is similar to the way that law is done in many countries, and works as follows: Under-specify. (Well, don't really under-specify, but keep it lean). To make this work, provide examples and rationales for how to interpret the specification. This is how I understand the techniques. (In the world of law-making this is known by terms like "statute and common law", or "regulation and precedent"). One of the responsibilities that implies is that when a new question comes up the working group tries to find an answer, and explain why they got that answer. (In our charter this is called "working on the techniques document"). This approach is useful because it is widely understood by policy makers, and because it allows us to do things that lawmakers regularly do - to use words like "reasonable", because in the body of examples (techniques) we provide examples of what is and is not reasonable, so people can work out where they stand. (This doesn't answer all the questions, just adds some thoughts to the discussion) cheers Charles On Mon, 30 Apr 2001, Paul Bohman wrote: The point that was made here is an important one: -- Original Message -- > I agree that we are not (and are not qualified for) setting policy, let alone > international policy. We are providing information about what is required to > ensure accessibility. The WAI is not a policy making group in the same sense as a government. I see the role of the WAI as a group that defines accessibility but that does not define compliance per se. We don't have to draw any lines in the sand such as "6th grade reading level" or anything similar to that. Each organization (whether it be a government, a company, a university or anything else) needs to determine where the lines are to be drawn for their particular circumstances. The WAI can make more general statements ("guidelines" rather than "policies"), but I would be reluctant to try to make the document sound more legal than it's supposed to. Of course, the dilemma is that it is difficult to validate or verify any sort of "compliance" to a document that is written to be very general. I also realize that some countries are using the WAI guidelines as their legal standards. I don't have a well-thought-out solution at this point, but I just wanted to stress the fact that the WAI is not making laws. The WAI is making guidelines that inform lawmakers. Yes, we want to be as specific as possible, and we want to create a document that can lead to validation criteria, but I think we have to use language that allows the policy-makers to set some of the criteria (e.g. appropriate reading level, or other issues that require a somewhat arbitrary standard to be defined). Perhaps we can create a separate document just for lawmakers: "How to use the WAI guidelines to set Web accessibility policies." In such a document, we could describe how to draw the lines, and we could suggest possible ways and places in which this could be done, but we would leave it up to the policy-makers to actually draw the line. Paul Bohman Technology Coordinator WebAIM: Web Accessibility in Mind (www.webaim.org) Center for Persons with Disabilities (www.cpd.usu.edu) Utah State University (www.usu.edu) -- Charles McCathieNevile http://www.w3.org/People/Charles phone: +61 409 134 136 W3C Web Accessibility Initiative http://www.w3.org/WAI fax: +1 617 258 5999 Location: 21 Mitchell street FOOTSCRAY Vic 3011, Australia (or W3C INRIA, Route des Lucioles, BP 93, 06902 Sophia Antipolis Cedex, France)
Received on Monday, 30 April 2001 21:53:01 UTC