Re: Definition of Accessible

Without disagreeing in any way with what Matt said, I would point out that
WCAG 1.0 was deliberately designed not to allow people to claim that their
sites were "accessible"; rather, the only claims permitted by the
guidelines were that one of the conformance levels had been met, and
thereby prohibitive/serious/not-so-serious barriers to accessibility had
been overcome, to paraphrase the effect of the three priority levels. As I
remember, there was a quite specific discussion of the point during the
development of 1.0, at which it was decided that conformance claims should
not be expressed in terms of "being accessible" or "not being accessible".

I agree with Matt that in version 2.0 this should be made clearer. We also
need to add explanatory material that clarifies the rationale underlying
the 2.0 conformance scheme. What these considerations indicate is the
importance of introductory and explanatory material within the guidelines
document itself.

Received on Wednesday, 12 June 2002 23:27:19 UTC