- From: Jason White <jasonw@ariel.ucs.unimelb.edu.au>
- Date: Sat, 28 Aug 2004 11:40:16 +1000
- To: Web Content Guidelines <w3c-wai-gl@w3.org>
Here are the observations wich occurred to me after the teleconference. 1. I do not think it is appropriate to have different conformance profiles for government sites, commercial sites, educational sites or other such categories. My concern here is that in drawing such distinctions the working group would be setting policy rather than formulating a technical specification. Moreover, any such policy-oriented conformance profiles run the risk of being inconsistent with the anti-discrimination laws in different jurisdictions. Policy setting should be left to the policy makers, with appropriate technical guidance. It should not be set by the W3C in a technical specification. 2. Gregg Vanderheiden once made the insightful observation that content should be categorized by the features which it possesses. For example, does it include non-text material? multi-media? Does it require user input? Is it dynamically modified? These and other characteristics make it possible to propose categories (i.e., profiles) whereby various guidelines in WCAG are included or excluded depending on the features of the content. This resolves the ambiguity surrounding the idea that some guidelines are simply inapplicable to certain types of content, by specifying explicit profiles which a developer can use to determine which guidelines are relevant, and which are not. By having explicit profiles which are identified in the conformance claim, there would be no room for a developer to decide on arbitrary grounds that certain guidelines were simply inapplicable and irrelevant, then to claim conformance on that basis. It is this prospect of abuse which, some have qargued in previous discussions, militates against allowing developers simply to determine that certain guidelines are met due to inapplicability. 3. Perhaps there could be different profiles based on the types of technology which the developer decides to rely on, and to assume support for, in constructing the content. This would effectively be the same as declaring one's assumptions regarding which technologies are supported, but WCAG would provide specific profiles by which to accomplish it. I haven't thought through the details of how it might work, however. Whether there should be conformance profiles in WCAG 2.0 at all is a separate question which I am not trying to answer here. I think the best approach is to settle on a proposal, then to decide whether its benefits are sufficiently worthwhile to justify its inclusion in the document, or whether the same objectives can be achieved in other ways.
Received on Saturday, 28 August 2004 01:40:56 UTC