RE: Key results and recommendations from Face to Face

We can't have a baseline specified in a non-normative doc.   We can have
suggestions for what people would use, and that can be non-normative since
it is just a suggestion and can be followed or ignored while still
conforming to WCAG.  But a baseline that is specified by us is a normative
item and needs to be in a normative doc.  
 
Gregg

 -- ------------------------------ 
Gregg C Vanderheiden Ph.D. 
Professor - Ind. Engr. & BioMed Engr.
Director - Trace R & D Center 
University of Wisconsin-Madison 


-----Original Message-----
From: w3c-wai-gl-request@w3.org [mailto:w3c-wai-gl-request@w3.org] On Behalf
Of Michael Cooper
Sent: Thursday, March 24, 2005 9:26 AM
To: w3c-wai-gl@w3.org
Subject: 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 16:40:04 UTC