- From: John M Slatin <john_slatin@austin.utexas.edu>
- Date: Wed, 25 Jun 2003 08:33:15 -0500
- To: <jasonw@ariel.ucs.unimelb.edu.au>, "Web Content Guidelines" <w3c-wai-gl@w3.org>
The approach that Jason recommends (allowing resource providers to exempt certain specific content from their conformance claims) sounds reasonable. However, difficulties arise if the content in question is central to the purpose of the site. For example, suppose an instructional site at a university acts as a pass-through for rebroadcast video material that does not have synchronized captions or descriptions. This material is required viewing/hearing for students enrolled in the course. In my mind, it makes no sense to allow this instructional site to make a conformance claim if it's core instructional content is inaccessible. An accessible shell around inaccessible content is sometimes worse than an inaccessible shell; and a shell that *claims* accessibility (except for the stuff at the heart of the matter) seems downright misleading. I suppose this same principle extends to other kinds of material. For example suppose a university registrar's home page is accessible, but the forms that students have to complete in order to register for courses are not accessible. Is a conformance claim limited to the home page permissible? What does it say: "Content of the page you are on conforms to WCAG 2.0 at minimum level. Beyond this point there be monsters"? John John Slatin, Ph.D. Director, Institute for Technology & Learning University of Texas at Austin FAC 248C 1 University Station G9600 Austin, TX 78712 ph 512-495-4288, f 512-495-4524 email jslatin@mail.utexas.edu web http://www.ital.utexas.edu -----Original Message----- From: Jason White [mailto:jasonw@ariel.ucs.unimelb.edu.au] Sent: Wednesday, June 25, 2003 3:25 am To: Web Content Guidelines Subject: 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 09:33:25 UTC