- From: Léonie Watson <tink@tink.uk>
- Date: Wed, 9 Nov 2016 00:44:09 +0000
- To: Jonathan Avila <jon.avila@ssbbartgroup.com>, WCAG <w3c-wai-gl@w3.org>
Some people find legislation a compelling reason to do accessibility, other people do not. I work for a US accessibility agency, and also for the UK Government, so I witness both these attitudes on a first-hand and daily basis. So may I suggest we stop discussing whether accessibility exists despite legislation or in spite of it, and accept the fact that we should consider people in both groups. Let's look at the people who depend on legislation first. It took Germany about three years to adopt WCAG 2.0, it took Canada five years to do it (except for the bits they didn't adopt), the EU might get around to it next year (but only for public sector websites), it's anyone's guess whether the US will ever upgrade from WCAG 1.0, and the UK doesn't reference WCAG at all. So we have one group of people waiting an entirely unpredictable amount of time for their respective governments to decide if, when, and how much of any new guidance they will adopt. That's ok though, because they will continue to use the current legislative requirements for region whilst they wait. Now let's look at the people who do not depend on legislation. They will adopt new guidance as it is released, and if there is even the smallest chance that they will use that guidance to make things better for disabled and older people on the web, why would we make them wait? So the choice seems straight-forward to me... we can either move slowly and make everyone wait, or we can move more quickly and enable everyone to adopt the new guidance as and when it suits them best. Léonie. -- @LeonieWatson tink.uk Carpe diem
Received on Wednesday, 9 November 2016 00:44:42 UTC