Re: [July F2F]] Proposed wording on Conformance and Conformance Claims

Jason White wrote:
>  > Editor's Note #2: We are currently looking at how to handle unknown or
>  > community-contributed, authored units that are created using an
>  > aggregator supplied tool. If the aggregator-supplied tool conforms to
>  > ATAG, can ATAG conformance be used to imply that the aggregated content
>  > conforms to WCAG?
> 
> No. If the original source of the material makes claims with respect
> to its conformance level, then it should be permissible to rely on
> this in making a claim regarding the combined content that result from
> performing the aggregation. If the aggregated content is not subject
> to human and machine testing sufficient to warrant a conformance claim
> (e.g., it can be submitted directly to the Web site and automatically
> posted without such human/machine verification being done) then it
> should be excluded from the scope of the conformance claim.

ATAG conformance indicates that machine verification has been done on 
the input, wherever it comes from. I think that's good enough to be able 
to say that Web bulletin boards, weblogs or other content management 
systems that conform to ATAG should in fact conform to WCAG, including 
external contributions.

I am not interested in attempting to say that any site that allows 
community participation must be inaccessible. I think that sites like, 
say, Accessify Forums, may take issue with that as well.

We need to be a little more clear with what the problem really is, and 
to what extent it can be fixed. Content that is syndicated from a 
newswire isn't going to get much more accessible (except insofar as you 
can add the title as alt text, for example). Video content provided 
without captions or descriptions and updated hourly are likewise not 
going to be made accessible in a timely fashion. And they'd fail ATAG 
anyway, if that's the case.

ATAG-conformant products produce WCAG-conformant content on a reasonably 
reliable basis. It's as good a marker as we've got.

-
m

Received on Thursday, 15 July 2004 10:28:59 UTC