Re: Key results and recommendations from Face to Face

Shadi,

  This comment gets at the heart of the struggle we are having over whether we can live with not defining a 
baseline. You are worried that whoever defines a baseline will not make good decisions because they will not 
have the expertise or knowledge.
  
  I claim that what your example is proposing is that we should define a baseline, since the baseline is what 
authors can assume about their audience, and that you are proposing that it should not include scripting. If this 
is part of the Guidelines themselves, it becomes normative. I think this means it is impossible for a government, 
for instance, to define a different baseline and still harmonize with WCAG2. And that, as technology continues 
to progress, the baseline could only be shifted by revising WCAG.

One suggestion from the Face to Face was that WAI should provide guidance and information to assist in 
defining sensible baselines. I think this would mean a repository of information about User Agents.

Loretta


> If you will (need to) provide multiple techniques anyway, why not define
> a default for "authors" who can not (for several reasons) make
> assumptions on their audience? Let's stick to the scripting example:
> If you will (need to) provide multiple techniques anyway, why not define
> a default for "authors" who can not (for several reasons) make
> assumptions on their audience? Let's stick to the scripting example:
> 
> Because you do not define a baseline, you need to define conformance to
> the Guidelines under the assumption that user agents and assistive
> technologies support scripting; as well as for the opposite assumption.
> Correct?
> 
> Since you already (implicitly) define conformance to both assumptions
> anyway, why not define that (for example) "scripts turned off" is the
> default unless "authors" can safely assume a different audience?
> 
> The reason for my proposal is that I believe it would be very difficult
> to fully shift the burden of "until user agents" onto to the "authors"
> and essentially require them to know this information in order for them
> to be able to use the Guidelines. Just to clarify, I do assume that
> "authors" should have some expertise in order to properly implement
> accessible Web sites but I do not expect them to be able to define a
> baseline unless you provide them with solid guidance on how to do so
> (i.e. guidelines).

Received on Wednesday, 23 March 2005 14:16:29 UTC