Should WCAG explicitly talk about *mainstream* assistive technologies?

In the current definition of assistive technology 
https://www.w3.org/TR/WCAG20/#atdef the concept of user agent is 
qualified with "mainstream", e.g.

"hardware and/or software that acts as a user agent, or along with a 
mainstream user agent"

"Note 2: Assistive technologies often communicate data and messages with 
mainstream user agents by using and monitoring APIs."

Would it also make sense to qualify the actual "assisitive technologies" 
with "mainstream"? In the current wording, it seems that any AT, even a 
completely non-standard one (for instance, if somebody invented a 
completely new AT that doesn't act/behave like any other common AT, and 
crucially does not interface with mainstream user agents or the OS in a 
standardised way), would still be covered, meaning that in theory 
authors would need to ensure their content works correctly (so testing, 
potentially coding specifically for that exotic AT that doesn't work 
like any other similar AT) against it in order for their content to be 
considered accessibility supported?

Am I misreading/misunderstanding this, or is it an actual potential problem?

Would adding "mainstream" in front of "assistive technologies" in most 
of that definition address this potential problem?

Thoughts (and inevitable lengthy discussion) welcome,

P
-- 
Patrick H. Lauke

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Received on Friday, 15 July 2016 11:18:07 UTC