Re: Tech Players Question IAB's Rich Media Guidelines

Interesting question for a sunny sunday afternoon. Let's consider it.

First from the point of view of WCAG 1:

In WCAG 1 there are a lot of priority 1 checkpoints which make it clear there
need to be alternative equivalents available. But nothing seemed to suggest
that auto-starting was not going to stop level-A conformance.

Clearly it is important that people can stop the motion of content in order
to meet level double-A, unless user agents allow that now (and that of course
opens the first issue that I don't find a resolution for yet).

So the other side of the question is "what accessibility problem does this
cause?".

We have recently had a number of people saying that the motion can cause
problems with understanding other content (or being able to concentrate on
it). What about audio? I suspect it is the same - I personally have trouble
mixing audio and visual information. But I am not an expert in this area, and
haven't found a lot of information.

So to summarise, as far as I can tell it is important to ensure that users
can stop the motion, and that it should be enabled by the User Agent. So what
is the status of the 'until user agents' requirement in checkpoint 7.3?

Anyone got more thoughts? What have I not noticed or thought about?

cheers

Charles

On Fri, 17 Aug 2001, Joe Clark wrote:

  Is the use of autoplaying video and audio ads not a violation of one
  or more Web Content Accessibility Guidelines, specifically those
  requiring the user to have control over processes, changes of state,
  and flickering?

  <http://www.atnewyork.com/news/article/0,1471,8471_868181,00.html>

Received on Sunday, 19 August 2001 08:38:29 UTC