RE: Review requirements in success criteria (was Re: 4.1 revised)

We may not be *requiring* conformance claims, but we do allow and (I trust)
encourage them; so perhaps we should leave the review statement in place as
a level 2 success criterion.  Moving it up to level one would place a
substantial burden on individual developers and small shops, who should (in
my view) be able to make voluntary conformance claims at level one.  The
caveat Jason mentions below still applies: other parties may review the
material and reach different conclusions about its conformance.

John

-----Original Message-----
From: Jason White [mailto:jasonw@ariel.ucs.unimelb.edu.au]
Sent: Thursday, October 24, 2002 1:48 AM
To: Web Content Guidelines
Subject: Review requirements in success criteria (was Re: 4.1 revised)



The principal reason why all review requirements have been placed at
level 2 in earlier drafts is the concern that, in making a conformance
claim, an individual or organization might incur liability in virtue
of having made a warranty regarding the accessibility of web content.

Now that we no longer require (except perhaps at level 3, as discussed
in a recent meeting) that conformance claims actually be published (or
made public), this justification for restricting review requirements
to level 2 is no longer valid. One can simply meet the requirements
but keep the conformance claim private. Note that WCAG 1.0 does not
require publication of conformance claims (cf., the discussion of
"closet conformance claims" following the publication of WCAG 1.0 as a
Recommendation), so we would not be departing from precedent.

I also think that the warranty argument is suspect on its own terms.
All one is claiming is that a review has been conducted and produced
certain results, not that a third party carrying out such a review
would arrive at the same conclusion.

Received on Thursday, 24 October 2002 08:23:41 UTC