- From: Charles McCathieNevile <charles@sidar.org>
- Date: Thu, 4 Dec 2003 18:23:27 +1100
- To: Kynn Bartlett <kynn@idyllmtn.com>
- Cc: Judy Brewer <jbrewer@w3.org>, "Gregg Vanderheiden" <gv@trace.wisc.edu>, "'Alistair Garrison'" <alistair.garrison@accessinmind.com>, <w3c-wai-gl@w3.org>, "'Jason White'" <jasonw@ariel.ucs.unimelb.edu.au>, Wendy Chisholm <wendy@w3.org>
Summary: Sidar would like to see errata discussed and incorporated into a second edition, but feel that many issues which require discussion are properly dealt with either in the work on techniques, or in the development of version 2.0 of WCAG. More detailed response... There seem to be three issues in play. One is incorporating errata - "mistakes in WCAG 1 that can be readily cleared up without changing the meaning of the document" might be a working definition. A new example might be clarifying what is meant by "relative units" in checkpoint 3.4, since the CSS specification describes px as a relative unit, although the clear intention of the WCAG checkpoint is to refer to units relative to the base size definition of the user. Some more examples are in the current list of errata: http://www.w3.org/WAI/GL/WAI-WEBCONTENT-ERRATA of course. As Judy pointed out, the process for dealing with these things has been recently revised, and it is now realistic to rapidly incorporate them into a second edition. From Sidar's perspective, this would be extremely helpful - in particular as a motivation to update the translations of WCAG being used in Spain and South America, and course material that we currently produce - and we feel that it should be possible without distracting the working group too much from the major task of developing WCAG 2.0. The second part is in making clarifications, as discussed by Kynn. The "until user agents" checkpoints are one example, but there are other areas such as what kind of metadata is actually required by checkpoint 13.2. This is more complex. There may be areas that can be readily resolved by the group, and incorporated into a second edition, as clarifications. There is one example in the current errata document. There are probably other ares better clarified by providing techniques - and we would ike to see more frequent republication of the techniques note. The third area is contentious "errors" - ones where there is currently significant discussion required, or disagreement. Correcting these takes some substantial work, and we feel it is appropriate that this work is part of the development process leading to WCAG 2. Finally, we agree that a second edition is not going to be made redundant by working on WCAG 2.0 in any reasonable time frame - the investment in and implementation of WCAG 1.0, and the time required to move to a new standard, particularly for languages other than english, where translation of documents and tools is likely to slow down the adoption even further. In the meantime, the fact that errata are known but not incorporated in a revised edition is already a problem, because many people do not read the errata. Cheers Chaals McCN On Friday, Nov 28, 2003, at 18:17 Australia/Melbourne, Kynn Bartlett wrote: > > > On Thursday, November 27, 2003, at 09:57 PM, Judy Brewer wrote: >> You seem to be asking a different question than Alistair, about an >> amendment to WCAG 1.0 itself, using the documented errata, and >> possibly also using some draft WCAG 2.0 provisions. Since the W3C >> Process for incorporating errata has recently been changed, it should >> probably be looked at anew with regard to some of the documented >> errata in WCAG 1.0. > > I would suggest "WCAG 1.0, Second Edition" as per a number of updated > W3C specs (XHTML, XML, etc) that use such terminology. [snip] > As Joe Clark pointed out, this is what I proposed in May: > > http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/w3c-wai-gl/2003AprJun/0218.html > >> "Erratum" seems a bad choice for an update which was planned from the >> start -- the phrasing "Until user agents handle empty controls >> correctly ..." >> indicates that this is not a mistake per se, but a simple update. [snip] > This is the approach which I feel would have the greatest benefits to > the working group, the Web developers, and the general public. > > WCAG 1.0 is with us now, and is being used -- likely in an "unpatched" > mode by developers, most of whom NEVER look at the errata -- and will > continue to be used as WCAG 2.0 work proceeds. [snip] -- Charles McCathieNevile Fundación Sidar charles@sidar.org http://www.sidar.org
Received on Thursday, 4 December 2003 02:24:19 UTC