RE: Key results and recommendations from Face to Face

Hmm... I echo Jason's concern that this essentially says "always provide HTML backups, forever". I would prefer that we take the approach of having a non-normative, WCAG-recommended baseline, at a level above the techniques, probably in the document currently known as Addenda. This baseline would be for World Wide Web use, i.e., public sites with an international or unspecified audience, and would be the one we strongly recommend authors use unless they have specific reasons they can use a higher baseline. In the year 2005, this baseline may say what Wendy suggests, provide fallbacks for scripts, plugins, images, etc. In the year 2007, we might be able to change the recommended baseline and say "scripts and plugin X do not need fallbacks, but other plugins and images still do". This way, we can provide a recommendation that is not normative but we strongly expect authors to follow, and is current to the technology of the day. 

I know there are concerns about fractioning of standards if we do this - even though sites all conform to WCAG 2, they use different baselines (or some use the old recommended one and some use the new recommended one) - and we need to talk through that issue. But I think we're going to get fractioning no matter what we do, and this allows us to make concrete recommendations while still enabling implementors to make the most appropriate choice. We do have to trust them to make a smart choice, but I don't see a way around that.

Michael

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Wendy Chisholm
>
> 3. If a decision maker *can not* make further assumptions about the 
> audience (because the decision maker is publishing to the 
> whole Web or 
> doesn't have control over user tools), then the content is functional 
> when technologies are turned off or not supported *or* an 
> alternative  
> must be provided.

Received on Thursday, 24 March 2005 15:26:29 UTC