Applicability of guidelines

I want to raise an issue that emerged from today's meeting. Many of
our guidelines apply only to content that meets specific conditions.
For example, guideline 1.1 is relevant only to content that includes
non-text components. Guideline 2.1 applies only to content that
specifies a user interface. There are numerous other examples
throughout the document.

At present, these conditions are not asserted explicitly in the
document. My questions:

1. Should we state directly that content which doesn't have the
   characteristics assumed by a particular guideline is deemed to have
   passed, albeit trivially? This would mean for example that if one
   is claiming conformance for content that has no non-text
   components, guideline 1.1 level 3 is satisfied, by default as it
   were?

2. Should we make the conditions under which each guideline/success
   criterion applies explicit in the text of the guideline or success
   criterion, or perhaps in a normative, accompanying note?
   If so, how should this be done?

3. In checklists and granular (metadata) conformance claims, do we
   need three alternatives for each success criterion, viz., "passed",
   "not passed" and "not applicable"? This has been discussed
   previously, with strong suggestions that if a condition presupposed
   in a success criterion is not satisfied by the content, then the
   success criterion should be treated as having been met. I don't
   think consensus was reached as a result of that discussion however,
   and the issue probably warrants re-consideration as the checklist
   format is worked out.

Received on Friday, 9 July 2004 02:25:08 UTC