R: Proposal for WCAG conformance mechanism.

 Tom:
The techniques should not be normative for a few
reasons:

* we would require authors to apply only the techniques we happen to have
considered and could preclude other viable ways of conforming to WCAG;
* we would have to go through a more stringent process to update techniques,
dramatically increasing the likelihood that the techniques will fall behind
the level of current technology, which is one of the things the
technology-agnostic structure of WCAG was designed to avoid;
* we would preclude WCAG conformance for any technology for which we have
not provided techniques, whether as a result of lack of resources or because
the technology is not an open standard.


Roberto C:
That is an important issue; actually in Italy we're discussing a lot - in
the list webaccessibile@itliste.org - about Web standards, W3C, and how to
follow raccomandations and guidelines.

The point is that some people believe that W3C raccomandations, including
WAI project and WCAG, should reflect every aspect of today's Web situation
and provide developers with examples of every possible application; of
course it's not possible to guess every kind of Web application and give the
correct way to develop it.

That's why the techniques cannot be normative, I agree with you, Tom.

W3C guidelines and techniques cannot suggest all the possible solutions for
today's and tomorrows technologies, but can (I'd say must) show the right
way to follow for eny kind of Web sites/applications. On the other side,
every developer, building any kind of web sites/applications, must find in
W3C raccomandations, guidelines and techniques a mentor which is able to
show them the goal to achieve, and providing them some good example.


Tom:
This proposal would require the guidelines to provide a skeleton model of a
QA process for technique development. This would likely be drawn from the
methods already in use for validating the techniques and techniques
documents. This skeleton model would then be used as a basis for QA
methodologies used to validate techniques used in conformance claims. Sites
claiming WCAG conformance would be expected to be able to prove on demand
that their techniques have been tested and determined to meet our
inter-rater reliability requirements. This process would not impose any
specific additional requirements on the nature of conforming content and we
do not propose to require there be a statement on the site indicating they
have followed this process. But if the site claims WCAG conformance and that
is challenged, documentation of the testing process would need to be
provided. Of course, sites that choose simply to use our own techniques
could simply refer to documentation we would provide as part of our
techniques development process.


Roberto C:
Well, let's try not to make this process too complicated, and to make
everyone understand that we're building it up to give developers much more
possibilities to get WCAG conformance. We should be able to present it as an
opportunity rather than a bureaucratic constraint.

Bye everybody,

Roberto Castaldo
-----------------------------------
www.Webaccessibile.Org coordinator
IWA/HWG Member
rcastaldo@webaccessibile.org
r.castaldo@iol.it
Icq 178709294
-----------------------------------

Received on Wednesday, 17 March 2004 12:50:18 UTC