- From: Gregg Vanderheiden <gv@trace.wisc.edu>
- Date: Wed, 25 Jun 2003 23:33:30 +0300
- To: jasonw@ariel.ucs.unimelb.edu.au, "'Web Content Guidelines'" <w3c-wai-gl@w3.org>
Hi I think we tried this in the past and it didn't work which is why we got to where we are. If I remember the thinking it went like 1- if we require something that cannot be done on all sites -- then (besides violating our rule for required items) it would mean that that site was unable to claim anything for WCAG. 2- if we solve item 1 by allowing people to just scope out of required items if they don't feel they can follow them, then we won't really have any minimum. So we said that if we wanted to have any exceptions - that we would have to include them in the success criteria. Now countries can of course create their own exceptions on top of ours. But if we wanted our symbol to mean anything -- it had to not allow exceptions (or scoping out of required provisions) itself. Else everyone could put our logo on the front page and a link to a long page of discussion or metadata that essentially walked around whatever they didn't pass on particular pages. Useful someday in metadata if they used it -- but they could scope out of that too. So then we have a page of text. PS If governments scope out of our requirements, then they can not say that they adopted our guidelines -- and neither can we. If we set this up so that countries HAVE to put exceptions to our minimum criteria, then we guarantee that they do not conform to the guidelines and people who pass could not use our seal. Only way they could use our seal is if we allow anyone to scope out and still use our seal -- in which case we are back to point 2 So we came to the conclusion that we had to set a minimum. Maybe we can set the rule for some types at the required level and the rest at best practice. hmmmmmmmmmmm Gregg -- ------------------------------ Gregg C Vanderheiden Ph.D. Professor - Ind. Engr. & BioMed Engr. Director - Trace R & D Center University of Wisconsin-Madison -----Original Message----- From: w3c-wai-gl-request@w3.org [mailto:w3c-wai-gl-request@w3.org] On Behalf Of Jason White Sent: Wednesday, June 25, 2003 11:25 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 16:34:39 UTC