- From: Jason White <jasonw@ariel.its.unimelb.edu.au>
- Date: Thu, 24 Mar 2005 15:40:44 +1100 (EST)
- To: Web Content Accessibility Guidelines <w3c-wai-gl@w3.org>
While I have a few minutes between appointments, here a a few more fairly disorganized thoughts on the user agent support problem. Scenarios I want to avoid: 1. (in a year or two) a developer writes a complicated site using XForms to provide the user interface. It is highly accessible due to all of the accessibility-related advantages of XForms, and (let us suppose) there is even a user agent available that supports XForms and works well with assistive technologies. Unfortunately the developer can't conform the WCAG 2.0 due to a baseline requirement that excludes XForms. 2. Again in a year or two, a developer is considering implementing a highly dynamic Web site using the new features of XHTML that are designed to make scripted content more accessible. The developer is committed to using scripts, but is willing to use the new features to make the content accessible to people with disabilities. There is even a user agent that supports these features compatibly with assistive technologies. The developer looks at WCAG 2.0, notices the baseline requirement and reasons as follows: "If I write my content using the new XHTML features, it won't conform due to the baseline requirement, and it will involve a certain amount of extra effort (e.g., changes in my development process and additional testing). If I write it using legacy techniques it still won't conform and will be much less accessible, but given that I can't make it WCAG-conformant by using the new XHTML features, I'm not going to bother and can't justify the extra work". Obviously, both of these scenarios are directed against having a normative baseline, especially a fixed one, or one that requires "widespread" availability of a technology (whatever that means in more precise terms). I don't mind a non-normative, changing baseline in the techniques documents, to provide guidance to developers and policy setters, however.
Received on Thursday, 24 March 2005 04:44:34 UTC