- From: Charles McCathieNevile <charles@w3.org>
- Date: Fri, 11 May 2001 10:04:11 -0400 (EDT)
- To: "Bailey, Bruce" <Bruce.Bailey@ed.gov>
- cc: 3WC WCAG <w3c-wai-gl@w3.org>, "'love26@gorge.net'" <love26@gorge.net>
Note: I consider that policy arguments are outside the scope of this group, whose charter is to provide a document that specifies how to make content to people regardless of disability. In fact, if we do fulfil our charter and policymakers use it without ensuring that it is applicable to their particular requirements I think the laziness charge does not fit this working group, and we should be clear about this in our own document. So there is nothing new in what follows: On Thu, 10 May 2001, Bailey, Bruce wrote: As I understand it, we have consciously decided that the WCAG is "guidelines" and that we are, in fact, working on "best practices" document. I suggest that this may be something of a "cop out". The term "guideline" -- the G in WCAG after all -- was mostly due to the fact the WAI (and the W3C for that matter) has absolutely no enforcement powers whatsoever. [snip] As unenforceable theoretical "guidelines" this is acceptable. I would like to suggest that this may be cavalier laziness (or perhaps merely wishful thinking) on our part, although it does allow us to compose a broader document (which mitigates against the laziness argument). CMN As enforceable laws regularly contain things like "reasonable judgement", for concepts which are hard to delineate precisely, I would suggest that it is perfectly sensible to use similar concepts in documenting best practice in a particular field. BB We have seen some bodies adopt the WCAG as "standards" -- at least as policy -- on the P1 or P2 level. Presumably, the organizations involved include some enforcement and remediation mechanisms. When the WAI got the chance, Judy and Gregg (and others I am sure) advocated that all WCAG P2 items be incorporated, verbatim, into the 508 standards. This, I think, would have been a legal disaster if it had occurred! At the very least, these real life examples illustrate that we should be mindful of the potential powerful implications of our "recommendations". CMN Unlike the US federal government, the Australian government has been happy to say that the things in WCAG are required, using the language as is. (This is a slight simplification - if you press them they will go into greater detail about how the law works, but meeting all the requirements of WCAG is their general statement of best practice, and their initial internal requirement is level-A conformance to WCAG). Also unlike the US federal government in Australia this stuff has actually been tested in court to the point of a decision. Legal disaster did not ensue. Charles' 2 centimes worth
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