- From: Gregg Vanderheiden <GV@TRACE.WISC.EDU>
- Date: Tue, 07 May 2002 21:48:27 -0500
- To: "'Ian B. Jacobs'" <ij@w3.org>, w3c-wai-gl@w3.org
RE SUGGESTION #1 - THAT DEFINITION OF ACCESSIBILITY IS NOT REALLY CHANGING. - agree completely. From top to bottom. Except I make the bracketed edits. a) WCAG X defines a set of requirements that, if met, will reduce barriers to accessibility for some users. [CHANGE "SOME" TO "MANY..." OR "MOST USERS WITH DISABILITIES".] b) Therefore, conformance to WCAG X is very likely to improve accessibility for many users. [ CHANGE "IS VERY LIKELY TO" TO "WILL"] c) Conformance is not a guarantee of accessibility. d) "Accessible" means can be used by a person with a disability. [PERHAPS - ADD THE WORD EFFECTIVELY AFTER THE WORD USED] RE; SUGGESTION #2 - REMOVING NUMBERS FOR DELETED ITEMS FROM APPENDIX We cannot change the numbering without scrambling the record of discussion in the archives. So we just leave them like this. True it provides no information - but if there is no harm, then I think we should leave them because renumbering would remove information from the others (when renumbered) and deleting the numbers leaves one wondering if something got dropped by accident. Make sense now? Or do you still think they should be removed? RE SUGGESTION #3 - EXPLAINING WHY CONFORMANCE BY DISABILITY IS NOT GOOD. I guess we could. I'll make a note to discuss this as an issue in the conformance section. RE SUGGESTION #4 and #5 ABOUT COMBINING AND REWORDING First, these are not requirements. They are just statements of consensus. We do not spend a lot of time wordsmithing them since they are not the deliverable. Only things we agreed to and wrote down for guidance and communication. (and memory). Often the statements referred to are arrived at during successive discussions. So they are piecemeal sometimes. Unless there is a problem we usually don't go back and clean up grammar or style. If you see a problem - then we need to address these. Otherwise they are just internal communication items that we share externally so people can track what we are thinking. Is there a problem with these? if so please repost. Thanks RE SUGGESTION #6 - CAN BE OBTAINED FROM THE SAME URI Your suggestion of having all the versions available from the same home page does satisfy this item. As does having an "accessible version" link off of an inaccessible page - as long as the link is accessible. So I'm not sure you do disagree. Do you? As always, thanks for the comments. Gregg ------------------------------------ Gregg Vanderheiden Ph.D. Ind Engr - Biomed - Trace, Univ of Wis gv@trace.wisc.edu -----Original Message----- From: w3c-wai-gl-request@w3.org [mailto:w3c-wai-gl-request@w3.org] On Behalf Of Ian B. Jacobs Sent: Tuesday, May 07, 2002 10:59 AM To: w3c-wai-gl@w3.org Cc: ij@w3.org Subject: Comments on WCAG 2 Requirements Hello all, Congratulations on the publication of Requirements for WCAG 2.0 [1]. I wish the group continued progress. I have a couple of comments below. - Ian [1] http://www.w3.org/TR/2002/WD-wcag2-req-20020426 1) Section 6: "Therefore, WCAG 2.0 must not completely change the definition of accessible content." The WCAG 1.0 defines "accessible [content]" to be: "Content is accessible when it may be used by someone with a disability." This seems pretty immutable to me. Perhaps what section 6 should say is "Therefore, what WCAG 2.0 requires and what WCAG 1.0 requires must not differ substantially." As usual, I prefer avoiding the "definition" of accessible content and instead leaning on the set of requirements that makes up WCAG 1.0 or 2.0. I think it's quite sufficient to say: a) WCAG X defines a set of requirements that, if met, will reduce barriers to accessibility for some users. b) Therefore, conformance to WCAG X is very likely to improve accessibility for many users. c) Conformance is not a guarantee of accessibility. d) "Accessible" means can be used by a person with a disability. 2) Appendix A, Section "N": The entries that are deleted due to changes in structure (e.g., N1, N3, ...) are not useful because there is no context and no links. I suggest just getting rid of them unless there's some background why they were there in the first place. At least put the titles of the things that were deleted; as is there is no useful information. 3) Appendix A, C4: "Should not be able to claim conformance by disability." I suggest that this be merged with C5. Please clarify in the document why conformance based on disability is considered a bad thing. 4) Appendix A, M1: "It should be possible to use metadata to claim conformance". All claims are (represented in) metadata (whether in English, HTML, RDF, etc.). I'm not sure what this requirement means. The next entry (M2) hints at machine-readable formats, which is what I thought M1 was about. I suggest merging M1 and M2 into something like: "Claimants should be able to represent their conformance claims using either a (primarily) human-readable format or a machine-readable format. The Working Group does not yet know whether a machine-readable format should always be required." I suggest strongly *not* requiring a machine-readable format for every claim. The TAG has been discussing whether all namespace documents should include machine-readable or human-readable information or both. Since there are many applications when one or the other is preferable, the TAG is making no absolute requirement (for now); they are simply indicating the advantages of each. 5) Appendix A, M4: "It should be possible for authors to decide not to implement a particular checkpoint." This is very much in the UAAG 1.0 model: indicate what you don't do in the claim. However, it is not possible to exclude a checkpoint "arbitrarily" and still conform. Please clarify in M4 that excluding a checkpoint based on author's decision means the content doesn't conform. (Unless that's not what's intended, in which case I don't understand how conformance will work.) 6) Appendix A, S1: "can be obtained by visiting the same URI". This seems unnecessarily strict. This implies that content negotiation is required, and I don't think that's necessary (I oppose this requirement). I think that if there are 10 versions of content, and all 10 links are available from some home page, that meets the accessibility need. If you really mean that content negotiation is required, please provide very clear rationale. -- Ian Jacobs (ij@w3.org) http://www.w3.org/People/Jacobs Tel: +1 718 260-9447
Received on Tuesday, 7 May 2002 22:48:54 UTC