Re: [4.1] Overview and summary of guideline 4.1

At 06:49 PM 1/20/2004, Joe Clark wrote:
>Yvette Hoitink wrote:
>>  Applicability to non-W3C technologies
>>
>>...Do we allow the use of proprietary technologies?
>
>WAI needs to resolve that issue quickly, if only because PDF and Flash are 
>two non-W3C formats with accessibility built in. (There are lots of those. 
>DVD, for example.) WAI has flirted with these dangerous and alien 
>technologies before in its guidelines:
>
><http://www.w3.org/WAI/GL/WCAG-PDF-TECHS-20010913/Overview.html>
>PDF Techniques for Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 1.0 and 2.0
>
>I know that document is orphaned, but it's important for WAI to decide if 
>it's going to publish accessibility guidelines for other formats. *I* 
>think it should.

There are two issues:
1. Allowing an author using non-W3C technologies to claim conformance to 
WCAG 2.0
2. Publishing techniques for non-W3C technologies

WRT 1 - We encourage authors to make accessible content and we encourage 
technology developers to build accessibility features into their 
technology.  If a technology can be used to meet WCAG 2.0, it should not 
matter who designed the technology.

WRT 2 -  Because we are a vendor-neutral organization, the W3C/WAI will 
only publish techniques for open specifications that are produced by a 
consortium.  The scope of our charter says, "Develop techniques for 
implementing the WCAG 2.0 in W3C Recommendations (such as XHTML, SMIL, SVG, 
and MathML) as well as ECMAScript." [1] The WCAG WG is not likely to 
address *all* W3C technologies and we encourage other W3C Working Groups to 
write authoring techniques for their specifications (some groups have 
expressed interest in doing this).  The WCAG WG (in coordination with the 
I18N WG) provides a schema, data and transformations [2] that may be used 
to produce techniques documents. It is my understanding that Adobe and 
Macromedia plan to publish techniques documents for PDF and Flash 
(respectively).

--wendy

[1] <http://www.w3.org/2003/08/wcag-charter.html#scope>
[2] <http://www.w3.org/WAI/GL/wcag20.html#techs>

-- 
wendy a chisholm
world wide web consortium
web accessibility initiative
http://www.w3.org/WAI/
/--

Received on Thursday, 22 January 2004 20:09:07 UTC