Re: [171] accessible rebroadcasts

Here is an alternative solution intended to cover this and other
cases.

Proposal:

1. Recognizing that this working group is not in a position to weigh
   in balance the many factors that influence policy decisions
   regarding what content is required to be accessible, and under
   which circumstances, we should state the checkpoints without
   qualification. That is, for checkpoints 1.1 and 1.2, content does
   not conform to the guidelines unless it has associated captions and
   descriptions.

2. We should allow the scope of a conformance claim to be defined
   flexibly. Thus, if it is decided on policy grounds that certain
   content doesn't need to meet the guidelines, then, under the
   circumstances defined in the policy, the developer should be able
   to exclude that content, and only that content, from the scope of a
   conformance claim.

3. We could, if desired, introduce statements into the guidelines
   explaining that various factors may make it impracticable or
   undesirable for all content to conform to the guidelines under all
   circumstances, and that policy makers may opt to allow exclusions,
   but this can only be done by exempting certain content from the
   scope of the conformance claim, and not by claiming conformance
   with respect to content that only satisfies a subset of the core
   checkpoints. This of course leaves open the possibility that the
   exempted content may happen to conform to some other set of
   guidelines or standard, for example that of the television industry
   in the case of rebroadcast multimedia - in which circumstances a
   conformance claim to that effect could be made, but not a WCAG 2.0
   conformance claim.

4. I don't think this is necessary, but we could also include
   non-normative notes at certain points in the document, directed at
   policy setters (whether they be governments or internal policy
   bodies within an organization) indicating why we think there may be
   difficulties in applying certain checkpoints universally, that is,
   under all circumstances, and giving examples of possible problems.
   By being non-normative, these statements would call attention to
   the issue without making a policy decision that affects
   conformance.

Received on Wednesday, 25 June 2003 04:24:46 UTC