Re: Study on Web accessibility in European Countries

James,
You are right ...the items you list as examples are certainly more restrictive. WCAG2 does not  suggest those practices as being required. The suite of WCAG2 documentation including the 'Understanding' and 'Techniques' are good reference points. 
The recently published  draft to Section 508 standards too heavily relies on WCAG 2 and contains identical specs and maybe the Commission can refer to it too.   
The Euro Commission Society should be advised to study these and just reference them. The rest is the Euro Commission Society's prerogative. 
Thanks,
Sailesh Panchang
Accessibility Services Lead
Deque Systems Inc
Reston VA 20191
Tel 571-344-1765



--- On Fri, 5/28/10, James Nurthen <james.nurthen@oracle.com> wrote:

From: James Nurthen <james.nurthen@oracle.com>
Subject: Study on Web accessibility in European Countries
To: "WCAG" <w3c-wai-gl@w3.org>
Date: Friday, May 28, 2010, 6:22 PM




A report
is available from the European Commission's Information Society
which aims to measure how well a selection of EU Web Sites meet both
WCAG1 and WCAG2.

Reading this report I am concerned that very specific technical
criteria are required to be met in order to meet each of the
guidelines. Certain of these criteria, in my view, are far more
restrictive than required by WCAG2.
These criteria are detailed in Annex
1 .



Some of the specific criteria where I believe this is overly
restrictive are:


  1.1.1 Non-Text Content
  
    Decorative content not rendered using background images is a
failure 

    
  
  1.3.1 Info and Relationships
  
    Layout tables are prohibited - and table which doesn't
represent data is a failure

    
  
  2.4.1 Bypass Blocks
  
    Skip Navigation links are the only way specified that a page
can meet this guideline

    
  
  4.1.1 Parsing
  
    Specifies that significant validation errors be avoided without
specifying what significant means.

    
  

Would the working group consider responding to this report and
clarifying how WCAG 2.0 is intended to be used.



Thanks,

James


James Nurthen | Project Lead, Accessibility

Phone: +1 6505066781 | Mobile: +1 4159871918 

Oracle Corporate Architecture

500 Oracle Parkway | Redwood City, CA 94065



Oracle is committed to developing practices and products that
help protect the environment

Received on Saturday, 29 May 2010 23:21:08 UTC