Re: Discussion on SC numbering

AWK wrote:
> we will find that we have inadvertently broken backward compatibility because of something that we miss.

That is a danger, and we’d have to be very careful, but I’d like to keep that door open as a solution to requirement 8 about minimising overlap.

We can give meta-categories to the new SCs, where they:

1.      Add a new requirement, unrelated to existing ones.

2.      Add new requirements related to an existing one.

3.      Expand/increase an existing requirement.

I don’t think there are any that remove requirements? (Anyone?) From the LVTF most are 1 & 2, only one of them is category 3. I suspect there are more from COGA though.

It is only for the expanding requirements that I’m suggesting that we edit or replace previous SCs.


> We could also have two official versions if we wanted to do something simple like grouping the A/AA/AAA items together in one version of listing the SC in order in another.

We can do the same thing from the other direction, where we map old to new.

> When I think about the volume of training materials and testing resources that have built in the current SCs, and that rules like EN 301 549 and (hopefully) the new 508 that include the 2.0 SCs, I think that the “upsell” to 2.1 for people who have learned how to work with 2.0 will be more like a dot-release instead of a major release.

I question who has actually “learned to work with” 2.0, is that the legal people or web developers (etc)?

I had a limited involvement with EN 301 549, and from what I could see:

-          A core group of experts evaluated criteria across domains (not just digital);

-          They published an (almost) identical set of criteria straight from WCAG 2.0;

-          Procurers were setup to copy-paste from the mandate376 website (that was a key requirement for the mandate website! Procurers should not have to know the details of the guidelines.)

-          Implementers (i.e. web developers & companies producing digital products) are the ones who actually have to use the guidelines.

Replacing or updating EN 301 549 / Section 508 will be a big thing anyway, WCAG 2.1 needs to make sense to everyone coming to actually use it (which is not legal people), and most of them will not have read it before.

It would still be a dot-release, just more usable…

-Alastair