a serouse issue at hand was: Re: [action] Reasons for not moving SC 3.2.2 up to level 1

> Please stop this non-productive thread of suggesting that we drop all
> provisions that help people with cognitive disabilities because we cannot
> think of ways to address all the needs of all of them.

Gregg I think this is  productive.
Unless I hear that it is OK to discuss this I will not make my suggestion 
again - but I think it would be a mistake.

We have a serious issue at hand and my suggestion might be a  way out.

We are in a catch 22 situation. We can not devolve techniques outside 
baseline technologies for the first draft (or so I was told) We can not have 
success criteria without techniques, we need to promote adoptability, and we 
need to get this draft to last call. But there is a problem we have not 
solved yet, and I think we know that too.

Part of the suggestion of removing checkpoint 3 is that  after we go to last 
call we start real work on an extension guideline that seriously addresses 
barriers of understanding. This would work from the ground up, which a clear 
and appropriate  mandate, specification and gap analysis to
create a true roadmap of success criteria and techniques creation for 
addressing this important issue. We could now simply  remove guideline three
from the WCAG 2.0 draft , which does not achieve very much anyway.

This would enable us to:

-Make a concentrated effort to solve these issue
-We would not need to be hampered by issues such as applicability to all 
sites, free speech, baseline  - People can  just conform to WCAG without the 
extension
-Adoptability for access for vision would not be slowed down ( by adding 
"hard to do" checkpoints)
-We will not hold up WCAG 2.0
-WCAG 2.0 will be simpler, we may be able to go down to 2 conformance levels

> Suggestions and examples - particularly of techniques that have been
> implemented successfully on multiple sites.  That is what is most useful.

Are they useful? As you know I have made tons of suggestions for years that 
have been turned down because of legitimate reasons - such as applicability 
to all sites, author burdens, reliant on technology outside baseline etc. I 
made two drafts of an RDF technique documents ( a ton of work) that 
addressed many issues, but it was taken off the critical list because it 
does not fit into the baseline technologies. I have worked with LD-web, made 
suggestions for CSS techniques - none of them seem to make it - all for good 
reasons such as concentrating on existing success criteria. I have offered a 
few time to start a small taskforce with oppositions to my perspective (such 
as Joe) so that together we can make a water tight proposal. The suggestions 
were not taken up but I am happy to try that again if you think it is a 
better solution - I am just concerned that it will delay last call (and not 
get anywhere).


All the best

Lisa

> own idiom for this type of behavior so I won't quote one here. But there 
> is
> no consensus to do such a thing.
>
> If you have suggestions for provisions that would help this group that are
> testable and usable on most websites please contribute them.
>
> Best yet - provide links to places that use them.  There are many programs
> and organizations that are dedicated to people with cognitive 
> disabilities.
> Surely at least some of them have tuned their sites to work with this
> population.
>
> If it is a special section of their site - then the techniques could be 
> used
> to add as Level 3 and advisory techniques.
>
> If it is their whole site - then it might be good for other levels,
> particularly if it has been implemented and is implementable on a wide
> variety of sites.
>
> Finally, remember that most of the access provisions at Level 1 and many 
> at
> level 2 do not provide direct access to any group. They only make it
> possible for those people to access the content if they use special user
> agents.    Most of these provisions also allow for people with cognitive
> disabilities to gain access with special user agents - today and in the
> future.
>
> Again - we all know this is a tough area.   So is deaf-blindness and other
> multiple disabilities.   Help us move forward if you can.   We have spent
> many many hours considering and trying to find guidelines and success
> criteria that work.  And there are many many success criteria that benefit
> people with cognitive disabilities.   There are many many types of 
> cognitive
> disabilities.
>
> Suggestions and examples - particularly of techniques that have been
> implemented successfully on multiple sites.  That is what is most useful.
> Remember, we need to be able to show multiple implementations on different
> types of sites (and not just advocacy sites) before we can get out of CR
> with these guidelines.
>
> Thanks
>
>
> 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 Lisa Seeman
> Sent: Thursday, January 12, 2006 2:14 AM
> To: Gez Lemon; WCAG
> Subject: Re: [action] Reasons for not moving SC 3.2.2 up to level 1
>
>
>>  In my opinion,
>> this just adds weight to Lisa's suggestion to drop guideline 3 and
>> stop pretending we're addressing the needs of users with cognitive
>> problems [1], as they're obviously not being considered here.
>
> This is the third agreement.
>
> Does anyone think that our guidelines really address the needs of users 
> with
> cognitive disabilities, (beyond mild disabilities such as dyslexia that 
> has
> been reasonably well treated and/or overcome) ?
>
> By the way, that is not to say that the group did not try. Just that we
> could not balance it with other needs like appropriateness for all sites. 
> I
> also suggesting that we do keep working on an extension guideline that 
> does
> address  the needs of users with cognitive disabilities.
>
> All the best
>
> Lisa
>
>
>

Received on Thursday, 12 January 2006 16:20:56 UTC