Re: Proposal to get out of the techniques business on WCAG.NEXT

Dear All, 

From my perspective the WCAG 2.0 Techniques are possibly the most important material we [in WCAG Groups] produce, as they are often the only aspects of WCAG 2.0 material that the developers / QA testers look at - as they are complete by themselves, understandable, readily implementable and testable.

Secondly, they are probably the easiest and safest manner for developers to evidence their conformance with WCAG 2.0, as the burden of proof with regard to the WCAG 2.0 Techniques rests on W3C/WAi's expertise, rather than their own shoulders.  Something of great worth in today's litigious society.

Finally, tool developers like myself are far more likely to write tests to evaluate W3C/WAI Techniques (and a good thing too), so developers who follow the techniques also (in time) get tools that are more and more able to assess their work.  With the benefit that web content created by one team is more readily evaluated by a second team.

It is true that there are load of techniques, of which I'm certain some could be removed, but it is simply a reflection of the rapid changes / developments in web / mobile web technologies.

I also firmly support the idea that a single, centrally maintained and up to date set of techniques, maintained by the same community that develops WCAG, should continue to exist.  In my opinion, the WCAG Techniques are the sharp end of the standardisation process. 

Very best regards

Alistair

On 27 Mar 2016, at 20:36, White, Jason J wrote:

> I agree with Judy that the techniques are useful. They are also an authoritative reference (non-normative, of course, but nonetheless subject to working group review) on the application of WCAG 2.0 to which developers can refer.
>  
> If this working group were to get out of the tecniques business, as has been proposed, developers would no longer have a central resource to use in applying the Guidelines. Instead, various resources would spring up of greater or lesser quality, some of which would be diligently kept up to date, while others would not be.
>  
> And all of this is being proposed in the name of addressing a perception that this working group produces too much documentation, i.e., that WCAG 2.0 + supporting documents are “too long”.
>  
> If the proposal were accepted, the amount of material that developers new to accessibility would need to read would be unlikely to change, but the amount of time they would have to devote to finding it, verifying its quality and ascertaining whether it was up to date would grow.
>  
> I firmly support the idea that a single, centrally maintained and up to date set of techniques, maintained by the same community that develops WCAG, should continue to exist.
>  
> 
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