- From: Jason White <jasonw@ariel.ucs.unimelb.edu.au>
- Date: Wed, 28 Aug 2002 13:44:45 +1000 (EST)
- To: Web Content Accessibility Guidelines <w3c-wai-gl@w3.org>
Although it might fall somewhat outside their scope, we plan to consult with the W3C's internationalization working group in any case, so we could raise the question of checkpoint 4.1 with them on that occasion. I agree it should be clear which requirements/advice are relative only to a certain class of languages and which apply more generally. Perhaps one solution would be to state the assumptions specifically in the techniques, e.g., if the natural language of the content allows for certain types of grammatical constructs and these are relatively uncommon by comparison with certain other constructs then the latter should be used in preference to the former, where of course we would fill in the details as to exactly which constructs are under discussion. On the separate, but related, question of what goes in the advice section as opposed to the success criteria, it is important to recall the principles which the working group has agreed on, namely that success criteria must be machine/HIR testable: it must be determinately true or not true whether each success criterion is satisfied. Advisory items (in the "additional ideas") section are, by definition, not testable in this fashion, but ought to be taken into account in conducting a qualitative review of the content. So much has been agreed upon already. I think there is a dangerous temptation to conflate "advisory" with "low priority", and for people to argue that such-and-such an item should be "advisory", when what they really mean is that it should occupy the third conformance level. Let's keep considerations of testability separate from questions of conformance level. I am not accusing anybody in this discussion of confusing the two, just suggesting that there is a very real risk of doing so.
Received on Tuesday, 27 August 2002 23:44:49 UTC