RE: Re[2]: acceptance criteria for new success criteria

From: Michael Pluke [mailto:Mike.Pluke@castle-consult.com]
Sent: Wednesday, June 1, 2016 7:48 AM

Does anyone much more experienced than I in how to make things work in WCAG see a way forward to achieve such a powerful ideal?

I’ve thought about it.

I think there’s an important and fundamental place for a broadly applicable specification such as WCAG in an era of personalization. For example, if, for privacy reasons, a user does not declare any access needs/preferences, then a default version of the content must be provided; but that version should still be generally accessible. WCAG defines the characteristics which this generally accessible version should have – a form of the content which is accessible, but not specialized to the needs of a specific user.

There is a real and practical need for such a general standard. Some content developers may not be able to support personalization; some users may have a legitimate reason to ensure that their access needs are not disclosed to a Web application or communitcated to the organization that operates it.

I think there is also scope for standards that define formal vocabularies for expressing user needs/preferences, mechanisms for providing them to applications, and the appropriate responses that applications should make to the declared requirements of a user given a set of needs/preferences. This last category lies within the scope of WCAG-like specifications. If a user declares a need for linguistic/comprehension support, how should an application respond, for example? What are the appropriate implementation strategies that extend beyond general accessibility requirements?


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