- From: Gregg Vanderheiden <gv@wiscmail.wisc.edu>
- Date: Tue, 08 Jul 2003 13:03:52 -0500
- To: w3c-wai-gl@w3.org
- Message-id: <022601c3457b$4a422a50$056fa8c0@USD320002X>
OOPs Slight error in USA description. Where it says "in illegal documents" it should have said "in legal documents". Some of these items are transcribed to please watch for transcription errors and let me know. Thanks. 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 Gregg Vanderheiden Sent: Monday, July 07, 2003 8:38 PM To: w3c-wai-gl@w3.org Subject: Draft Notes on Web Accessibility from Prospective of Various Countries Draft Notes on Web Accessibility from Prospective of Various Countries The following is a summary of the notes I took during the face to face. Since I was chairing the meeting while I was scribbling these notes, I may not have gotten everything correct. Those who are familiar with each country, please correct any misstatements that I make here. Of course, it needs to be recognized that everything is more complicated than more simple summary statements, however, from the discussions, this is an attempt to provide some summary comments that will help people not familiar with the different countries understand what the situations are. Australia The approach in Australia has not been to lay out specific guidelines, but rather to simply say that the web must be accessible or you must fix it. WCAG is recognized as the best way to fix it. Thus, WCAG is not mandated, but it is recognized as the best way of meeting the mandate. Government sites must be accessible. Public accommodation sites (sites that are open to the general public or which the general public can sign up for services on) should be made accessible if it's not too expensive. "Not too expensive" is a fairly rigorous test. Three percent of one's budget may not be considered "too much". Regarding 2.0, the Australian government is waiting for 2.0 and is interested in its use. (Note: The term public accommodation is not a legal term in Australia.) Spain Spain is writing national standards. They are using WCAG 1.0, but doing some interpretation. It is expected that they will adopt 2.0 when it comes along. Italy It is expected that Italy will have a law before the end of the year. Separate from the law will be regulations or specifics. At the present time, there are lots of recommendations. There are approximately 12 proposals in Parliament at the present time. There are 4 or 5 main proposals, one of which is from the minister of innovation and technology. This proposal is currently somewhat "508 like" in that it is based on the work of the W3C, but rewords things. This proposal is currently influx and being modified in order to incorporate other proposals and ideas. Efforts are being made to see how much alignment can be eventually created. It is not clear at this time exactly how things will work out in the end. At the present time, there is not much enforcement. Approximately 3% of sites are believed to be accessible. The also noted the ISO/TS 16071 refers to the W3C. Israel Accessibility is believed to be desirable, but there are no regulations. AT is a large problem in Israel at this time, particularly screen readers. One of the problems is the fact that common practices to leave all of the vowels out of words. This works fine for Braille readers, but screen readers have great difficulty with this. It was stated that it could cause 3 years' salary to purchase a screen reader which is able to handle and interpret words that are missing all of their vowels. Sweden Not strongly oriented toward the WCAG. It wasn't clear, but it seemed that they would prefer that you made a law. However, Sweden has also been known to go its own way if it felt the laws or regulations did not fit. Scotland Since 1999, Scotland has had the Discrimination Act. WCAG 1.0 is currently being used. Currently, government bodies are using consultants plus Bobbie. Thus, the aspects of 1.0 that are probably most being used are those that are automatically testable. Regarding WCAG 2.0: It will likely take time to adopt and probably will be based on cases. USA The U.S. Government is using Section 508, which was derived from WCAG 1.0 with some items added and some priorities rearranged. Not all agencies in the government are addressing it with equal effort. In the private sector, there is a mixture of WCAG 1.0 and Section 508. Section 508 is often used because of the availability of tools and the perception that it is easier. In some cases, it is seen as more restrictive. Also, some companies are very interested in establishing the fact that they are not covered by 508 and therefore are purposefully using WCAG 1.0, particularly in illegal documents (when they agree to make something accessible). For clarification: The Section 508 guidelines are only required for government websites or websites that are developed by the private sector specifically for the government. The 508 standards may at some other time be used for other purposes. However, the 508 law only applies to government sites. (Note: The 508 law should not be confused with the 508 Accessibility Standards which were created to help implement the law.) Anyone can use the 508 standards. Government agencies are required to. Germany Laws and regulations are implemented on a national level. However, all universities and schools follow state laws rather than federal law. There are currently 16 states. Seven have disability discrimination laws. Of these, two are older than the federal law and therefore have no information technology provisions in their disability discrimination laws. The other five used the federal law and therefore have the ID provisions. The federal law took WCAG 1.0 and invited input. They then constructed their own set of guidelines which fall into two categories. Priority 1 - Which is a must for all. Priority 2 - Which is a must for entry pages and key pages. They should be followed on the rest. New content must follow the guidelines now. By August 2005, all content must legally follow the guidelines or be removed. The federal disability discrimination act has a provision for review in the next three years, thus, it will be coming up for review about the same time that WCAG 2.0 is being released. We do not currently have a mapping of the priority 1 and priority 2 German guidelines to WCAG 1.0 and 2.0. However, one of the working group members has volunteered to create such a mapping for us. Belgium There's nothing solid in law. Some Belgium sites are working on accessibility, but not many yet. There's on agreement on a level. Most are going for level A. There may be a law. If so, it would be in the second half of 2004. If there is a law, it will be based on WCAG. United Kingdom It was felt that it will only be a matter of time before a case would be brought. The disability research council assessed 1,000 sites. Then 100 sites in more detail. Apparently, only 2 of the 100 sites met level A. This got people's attention. Testing was done with Bobbie (and it was believed that it was mostly just the auto--testing part of Bobbie). They have been using level A from 1.0. With regard to 2.0, they are watching the United States and Australia and will be making their judgments after 2.0 comes out. Report on Web Access in EU There's currently a report out on Web Access in the EU. It is at europa.eu.int. The full URL is: http://europa.eu.int/information_society/topics/citizens/accessibility/web/w ai_2002/ep_res_web_wai_2002/index_en.htm http://europa.eu.int/information_society/topics/citizens/accessibility/web/w ai_2002/eaccess2002_report_final/a_documents/ap2002-wai-rep3.pdf Corrections please. As noted above, these are based on my notes. If you notice anything on here that is incorrect or misleading, please let me know and I will correct it and post a revised version. Gregg -- ------------------------------ Gregg C Vanderheiden Ph.D. Professor - Ind. Engr. & BioMed Engr. Director - Trace R & D Center University of Wisconsin-Madison
Received on Tuesday, 8 July 2003 14:04:01 UTC