Reconsidering the wording of our main guidelines

As a result of today's conference call, and specifically a comment that
Gregg made, I took a look at our document as a whole, and I have come up
with an alternate meta-organization scheme that I'm including in this
email for consideration. I have reduced our four main guidelines into
three, and I have re-titled them. This required some rearranging of the
checkpoints. Each change to the checkpoints is noted in the context of
the list below and marked with an asterisk. I did not delete or alter
the wording of any of the checkpoints, just the main guidelines. My
re-organization does not take into account any recent discussion of the
combining of checkpoints or any of the smaller details, but this is an
attempt to organize our thoughts on the bigger picture. 

 

1.0 MAKE THE CONTENT AVAILABLE to a broad range of users and
technologies. 

1.1             Provide a text equivalent for all non-text content.

1.2             Provide synchronized media equivalents for
time-dependent presentations.

1.3             *Identify the primary natural language of text and text
equivalents and all changes in natural language (previously 1.4).

1.4             Choose technologies that support the use of these
guidelines.

1.5             Use technologies according to specification.

1.6             Design user interfaces compatible with assistive
technology. 

1.7             *Use device-independent event handlers (previously 2.5).


1.8             Ensure that content remains usable when technologies
that modify default user agent processing or behavior are turned off or
not supported.

 

2.0 ALLOW FOR USER NEEDS AND PREFERENCES.

2.1             Provide multiple site navigation mechanisms.

2.2             Provide consistent and predictable responses to user
actions.

2.3             Either give users control of mechanisms that cause
extreme changes in context or warn them of pending changes.

2.4             Either give users control over how long they can
interact with content that requires a timed response or give them as
much time as possible.

2.5             *Avoid causing the screen to flicker (previously 2.6).

2.6             *Handle input errors, such as misspellings (previously
2.7). 

 

3.0 MAKE THE CONTENT COMPREHENSIBLE.

3.1             Use consistent presentation.

3.2             *Use markup or a data model to provide the logical
structure of content (previously 1.3).

3.3             *Separate content and structure from presentation
(previously 1.5).

3.4             *Emphasize structure through presentation, positioning,
and labels (previously 3.2).

3.5             *Write as clearly and simply as is appropriate for the
content (previously 3.3).

3.6             *Supplement text with non-text content (previously 3.4).

3.7             *Annotate complex, abbreviated, or unfamiliar
information with summaries and definitions (previously 3.5). 



Paul Bohman
Technology Coordinator
WebAIM (Web Accessibility in Mind)
www.webaim.org
Center for Persons with Disabilities
www.cpd.usu.edu
Utah State University
www.usu.edu