- From: Jason White <jasonw@ariel.ucs.unimelb.edu.au>
- Date: Thu, 31 Oct 2002 19:22:41 +1100
- To: Web Content Guidelines <w3c-wai-gl@w3.org>
In commenting on WCAG 2.0, Terry Thompson suggested that the W3C Recommendation should contain only the normative parts of the guidelines document, and that the non-normative (explanations, examples etc.) should reside in a separate document, connected to the guidelines via links. I disagree with this proposal, mainly because it is completely out of line with W3C practice, including the design of other guidelines documents. I think there ought to be some uniformity in structure, organization and, where possible, terminology across W3C guidelines as such. Also, in order to understand the guidelines it is often desirable, even if not strictly necessary, to read the explanatory notes and examples; separating them from the principal document would greatly reduce their visibility to first-time readers. As an alternative I suggest: 1. that as in WCAG 1.0 we create a checklist, in this case comprising only guidelines, checkpoints and success criteria, to be published with the guidelines as part of the W3C Recommendation. 2. that a link to this checklist be included in the principal guidelines document, as close to the beginning as is possible while conforming to W3C publication policy. 3. As Gregg? suggested, it might also be useful to provide such a checklist in the form of a table. If so, this should be included as well. I am hopeful that a solution of this kind (with or without modifications) will be judged satisfactory. It also eliminates the problem of having four types of document: guidelines, guidelines +comments/examples, techniques and checklists. On the present proposal there would only be guidelines, techniques and checklists (including one checklist linked near the start of the guidelines themselves). Further, I like of Andi's suggestion of a web page that gives links to all of the checklists and techniques documents as well as other relevant publications. Actually, the checklist page may amount to a form through which the dynamic generation process can be controlled, but that is a decision yet to be taken.
Received on Thursday, 31 October 2002 03:22:50 UTC