Review of WCAG 2.0 Intro and checkpoint 1.5

The review mainly focuses on WCAG 2.0 and its relation to scripting.
I've tried to split it across mailings which roughly equate to
checkpoints.

Scripting [1], is very prevalent on the web, almost all sites of any
size use scripting, yet developers are very poor when combining script
and accessibility, indeed the majority of developers currently have a
"it works ok in IE" mentality, and even with that they mean "Default
configuration of IE with mouse etc."  Cross browser compatibility
isn't enough of an issue, let alone Accessibility.

In general I use scripting as suggestions which improve
usability/understandability/accessibility like CSS does with
presentation and it certainly doesn't have a text equivalent [2].  The
WCAG 2 document (and the WG) appears to see scripts differently from
this, and put it across in such a way as it makes people think "can't
use script" or "must produce script and non-script site" to achieve
compliance.  It would be nice if Checkpoint 1.5 could include this in
some way, unfortunately I haven't been able to come up with a
suggestion though.

Jim.

[1] ECMAScript in reality, with only IE and Icestorm supporting any other
language.
[2] Currently often breaking accessibility to achieve usability.

Received on Thursday, 24 January 2002 16:11:35 UTC