Re: Open AJAX redefining WCAG 2 requirements...

David,
These  (FONT, U and possibly they have missed CENTER) are deprecated tags. WCAG 1 disallows deprecated tags. CSS use is advised instead.    
The problem is these rules have been on the books for nearly a decade prior to WCAG 2 perhaps after some serious deliberation by the then WCAG-WG. So use of deprecated tags is considered not good for accessibility.
(I do not understand why, except that their presentation effect will not go away if CSS is turned off.  Browsers still support them and AT-users like me are not impacted. Yet this was the rule of the land since 1999).  

The broader point is that it is not clear to many which of the guiding rules of WCAG 1 now stand deprecated by WCAG 2 . Or why.  
Here is another example:
Vision impaired  AT users are seriously impacted if headings are not used in sequence or heading levels are skipped. This was a clear requirement of WCAG 1 checkpoint 3.5 and I was so glad to see SC 1.3.1 of WCAG 2 and believed it elevated the Priority-2 checkpoint to Level A. But the powers that be at WCAG-WG have now decreed that it is alright if levels are skipped. They do not consider it to be a serious accessibility issue but a mere 'best practice'. I strongly disagree with this view. Why has using headings as per specs become a mere best practice and not an accessibility requirement?   

So WCAG-WG clearly  needs to document all WCAG 1 checkpoints that are no longer considered accessibility requirements with reasoning. It will have to be better than merely saying the checkpoint is HTML specific. 
 Sailesh Panchang
www.deque.com


--- On Thu, 6/23/11, David MacDonald <david100@sympatico.ca> wrote:

From: David MacDonald <david100@sympatico.ca>
Subject: Open AJAX redefining WCAG 2 requirements...
To: "'WCAG'" <w3c-wai-gl@w3.org>
Date: Thursday, June 23, 2011, 7:27 PM

 It appears to me that the Open AJAX form have accepted an independent set of violations of WCAG 2.0 that are distinct from the requirements of WCAG 2.0   http://www.oaa-accessibility.org/  For instance, the following appear to be violations of 4.1.1....   IDStatusPrioritySeverityRule Description17AcceptedPriority 2ViolationRule 17: Do not use the FONT element to style text58AcceptedPriority 2ViolationRule 58: Do not use the B element.59AcceptedPriority 2ViolationRule 59: Do not use the I element.60AcceptedPriority 2ViolationRule 60: Do not use the U element.    

Received on Friday, 24 June 2011 15:18:31 UTC