RE: Recommendation to move WCAG Techniques out of TR, concerned about Failure Techniques loosing authority

I’ll +1 David here, with an emphasis on “…the working group's failures and techniques which have been vetted in public.”  …with the additional point of underscoring the words “Vetted” and “Public”. There needs to be a clear indication that any given technique has been vetted and “approved” or “finalized” (as opposed to a work-in-progress). This is critical when tracking conformance/accountability.

 

Cheers!


JF

 

From: David MacDonald [mailto:david100@sympatico.ca] 
Sent: Friday, May 29, 2015 11:53 AM
To: Eric Eggert
Cc: WCAG
Subject: Re: Recommendation to move WCAG Techniques out of TR, concerned about Failure Techniques loosing authority

 

Hi Eric


I don't think it is a misconception that TR documents are more official than documents that are put up by a working group outside of TR. Many  TR documents are not normative, but they still have higher status than our wiki's and other working documents which have not yet reached TR. I think that is what is at issue here, and the Government of Canada is saying is OK to be outside of TR as long as they know they are the working group's failures and techniques which have been vetted in public.




Cheers,

David MacDonald

 

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On Mon, May 25, 2015 at 7:08 AM, Eric Eggert <ee@w3.org <mailto:ee@w3.org> > wrote:

One comment, inline…

On 23 May 2015, at 18:29, David MacDonald wrote:

Below is an exchange with the Government of Canada on the question of
TR. We don't discuss anything about the logistics of link addresses
etc. which Gregg brought up and I think we need to consider carefully
separately. This exchange is just about the question of scrutiny
before publication and authority of the techniques. I think the main
take away is they don't perceive a proposed move to TR as something
that would mess up their existing policies.

====

Government of Canada question: Hi David, So the techniques and
failures would continue to be updated but there potentially could be
less rigour? What would be the difference in the vetting process
between the two scenarios?

=========
David response: I think in practicality it would be the same scrutiny,
they would still be put out for public review, but with the advantage
of being able to fix bugs quicker etc...... we usually don't get many
people commenting during our public calls for review.

=======
Government of Canada: Okay, then I don't think it would be much of an
issue for us, as the Standard on Web Accessibility would require the
techniques to be used and the failures to be avoided regardless of
their official status at the W3C. Being maintained and updater quicker
would be a good thing.


I think this shows the common misconception: The status of techniques and failures won’t change (at least that is my understanding): They are non-normative information, that are published as “Working Draft Notes”, which means they are under /TR/. After the change, they would be published somewhere else (non-/TR/) but still be non-normative.

My take away is that people think everything in /TR/ has some kind of non-informative status, which is not the case. In that light, the move of the individual techniques could clarify this common misunderstanding.

Cheers,
Eric

Cheers,

David MacDonald



CanAdapt Solutions Inc.

Tel:  613.235.4902 <tel:613.235.4902> 

LinkedIn

www.Can-Adapt.com <http://www.Can-Adapt.com> 



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On Fri, May 22, 2015 at 10:45 AM, Gregg Vanderheiden
<gregg@raisingthefloor.org <mailto:gregg@raisingthefloor.org> > wrote:


On May 22, 2015, at 8:55 AM, Michael Cooper <cooper@w3.org <mailto:cooper@w3.org> > wrote:

So I hope everyone understands that accepting the charter as proposed does
not force us into a particular decision with our resources. And I hope
everyone can see the value in building flexibility on that into the charter,
since we have to close the rechartering process up now, so that we can
continue the discussion on our publications without undue constraints.


Yes that is a good idea.    and yes - I see that building in the flexibility
does not commit you either way.


Gregg





--

Eric Eggert
Web Accessibility Specialist
Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI) at Wold Wide Web Consortium (W3C)