Comments On Draft: Principle 1

Hi all.

Here are my comments on guidelines 1.1 to 1.5


Guideline 1.2

Question:  Why is the below listed as an exception?
	"If content that is rebroadcast from another medium or resource meets accessibility requirements for that medium, then the rebroadcast satisfies this checkpoint
If it complies with other applicable sections of WCAG 2.0"

Is this almost a common sense statement?  Any content that meets accessibility for it's medium will have to satisfy this guideline as it will for any others in order to assert that it complies.  The issue of weather or not it is a re-broadcast of something else is not important to it's own accessibility.  And what of the accessibility of the original broadcast which in itself may not have met this guideline.  Are we saying here that if you provide a re-broadcast that is accessible, then you can assert that the original content meets 1.2?  I would suggest that the original content does not meet 1.2, the re-broadcast does, and so the issues are separate.  Maybe the notion of "providing a complete alternative" (c.f. wcag 1.0, 11.4) is more to the point, and if so, this issue should be addressed somewhere else in WCAG 2.0.  If I am wrong here or I have misunderstood something, please let me know.

Could the notions contained within the below notes be included somewhere in the success criteria?  At the moment they are notes under the "Who benefits" sections
	"For education and training materials), provide content so that it does not require tracking multiple simultaneous events with the same sense, ..."
Could a more general note on guidance for tracking multiple simultaneous events with the same sense be included in the success criteria?

In the below example, Why should there be no need for an audio description?  Audio descriptions are not really just to provide audio if there is already audio.  They are often used to provide a description of what is happening visually.  For a silent movie, I would have thought audio descriptions would be even more important for blind people.
	"An animation shows a pantomime with a white face and black costume climbing an invisible ladder. There is no audio track for this animation. No captions or audio description are required. Instead, a text label and description are provided as required by guideline 1.1."


Guideline 1.3 

At the beginning of Success criteria at level 1, should we have?
	"Ensure that the following can be derived programmatically ..."
Instead of:
	"The following can be derived programmatically ..."
Just to make sure that this is interpreted by the reader as a direction for what must be.


Guideline 1.4

I have referred to some of the issues in my previous email so won't repeat them here, but I have some others and a few specifics re the wording:

Could we say foreground content (e.g. words and images) from background content?   That is, put the word "content" in to generalise, and then talk about words etc in the criteria.  So use:
	"Guideline 1.4 in visual presentations, make it easy to distinguish foreground content from background content"
Instead of:
	"Guideline 1.4 in visual presentations, make it easy to distinguish foreground words and images from the background content"

What about the issue of regions on a page that overlap?  E.g. a menu fly-out is a "region" or "box" that overlays on top of the normal page content.  But the menu box contains text, as does the page itself.  This guideline would thus allow a content developer to use black text on a white background for the page, and black text on a white background for the menu fly-outs, but not realise that the white menu boxes will not contrast with the background of the page itself, thus making it difficult to distinguish what is a menu and it's content and what is part of the page.

	"Guideline 1.4 in visual presentations, make it easy to distinguish foreground content (i.e. text, regions or images) from the content that is used as a background (i.e. regions, pages or images) for the given foreground content."
Or just:
	"Guideline 1.4 in visual presentations, make it easy to distinguish foreground content from the content that is used as a background for the foreground content."
And express the notions of text, word, regions, images and pages in the success criteria etc.


1.5 is noted as a level two guideline but there are no success criteria at level 2?
	"Guideline 1.5 In default auditory presentations, make it easy to distinguish foreground speech and sounds from background sounds. [Level 2 guideline]"
Should the success criteria in some way "mirror" the way the criteria is set out for 1.4, as these guidelines are conceptually similar?

Received on Thursday, 11 March 2004 20:33:58 UTC