Re: Unifying ATAG and UAAG in 4.2 (or surrogate)

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Jason White" <jasonw@ariel.its.unimelb.edu.au>

Yvette P. Hoitink writes:
 >
 > I do like your proposal that WCAG should reference UAAG and ATAG, 
just like
 > UAAG and ATAG reference WCAG. That way we maximize the awareness of 
the
 > existence of these guidelines.

I agree this is a good idea, independently of the extent to which the
different sets of guidelines are well known to developers, which as
Yvette rightly notes, varies according to context.

However, it isn't clear how the interdependencies should be stated. Is
it sufficient to say that if any parts of the content satisfy the
definition of "user agent" or "authoring tool", then the respective
guidelines should be applied? This is not the purpose for which the
definitions were written. An alternative would be to stipulate that if
it is possible for part or all of the content to conform to UAAG or
ATAG, then it must so conform. A techniques document could then set
out the characteristics that indicate one is dealing with an authoring
tool or user agent component.

Roberto Scano:
I agree about the reference to the ATAG for authoring tools that are 
web-based, like CMS. Also here in Italy we are working for promote the 
ATAG: at now not inside the law, but there are a lot of initiatives that 
promote the use of tools that help to generate code that conform to 
WCAG: as all we know, there isn't a *supertool* that let everyone to 
conform to WCAG, and there isn't also a *supertool* that conform to the 
maximum level of ATAG 1.0.

So, if we have some content that generate other content, we need to 
refer at least to the mimimum level of ATAG 1.0.

What I don't understand is: there are web contents that are "user 
agents" ?
If the answer is: yes, see for example embedded video, embedded 
document, my reply will be: these are objects, and should be referred as 
the *old* WCAG 1.0 Checkpoint 8.1.
Also, the problem is that if we refer to embedded objects that are 
"played" with an user agent (media player) inside another user agent 
(Browser), how can we check the player conformance?
All depends about the user preferences: I can, for example, choose to 
use Quicktime for show the .avi files intead of Windows Media Player or 
RealONE, or use other freeware applications: should we ask to the web 
developer to wrote in the page what user agent must use for see an 
object inside a page?

This is my dubt.

Roberto Scano (IWA/HWG)

Received on Friday, 8 April 2005 09:05:52 UTC