Issues on WCAG 2.0 August 24th draft

I would like to log the following issues against the latest WCAG 2.0 draft:

Checkpoint 1.1

The success criteria indicates that interactive scripts need a "functional
equivalent such as a form". This should be removed from the success
criteria. The definition of non-text content includes "applets and
programmatic objects" and "scripts". These should be removed from the
definition. Scripts, applets, and plug-ins can be accessible and if they
are accessible, you shouldn't be required to provide a text equivalent to
them.

Checkpoint 2.7

The success criteria indicates that "where possible, the user is allowed to
select from a list of options rather than generate text". For blind users,
this is not always desirable if the choices are intuitive and the list is
long. For example, if the list is the 50 states, you should be able to
enter the state without having to listen to all the choices in order to
select one.

Checkpoint 4.1

Success criteria 5 says "is supported by user agents and assistive
technologies". This should read "is supportable by user agents and
assistive technologies". If a technology has documented accessibility
support and you implement your site according to the specification (per
checkpoint 4.2), your site is "accessible". User agents and assistive
technologies have a responsibility to support the spec too. If they don't
support it yet, it is a different issue which is covered under checkpoint
4.4.

Checkpoint 4.3

Success criteria 1 is covered by 4.2. Success criteria 3 is covered by 2.5.
Success criteria 4 should be a recommendation, not a requirement.

In addition, I have the following comments on the draft:

- Regarding the use of the term natural languages in Checkpoint 1.4. The
draft asked for input from reviewers on the term '"natural languages" We
call them "national languages" in IBM.

- Regarding Checkpoint 2.5 success criteria. Suggest "if generic event
handlers are not available, provide at least two device-specific event
handlers. If the action or result of the action can be discerned textually,
one of the device-specific event handlers must be encoding."

- Regarding Checkpoint 2.7 - Handle input errors, such as misspellings. The
draft asked for input from reviewers on other types of input errors. There
are other types of input errors that can be "handled". Examples are
validating that the double entries of an e-mail address or a password
match.

- Under Checkpoint 4.2, you have a link to the "IBM Guidelines for ....
Java". We would prefer that you link to our IBM Java Accessibility
Checklist which links to the above document where appropriate. The link is
http://www-3.ibm.com/able/accessjava.html.

Andi
andisnow@us.ibm.com
IBM Accessibility Center - Special Needs Systems
(512) 838-9903, http://www.ibm.com/able
Internal Tie Line 678-9903, http://w3.austin.ibm.com/~snsinfo

Received on Friday, 7 September 2001 11:24:08 UTC