Re: Accessible authentication and we need a fundamental change

Lisa,
I hear your concern about COGA SC getting into WCAG 2.1, but I’m concerned that your statement that WCAG 2.1 cannot be the recommended spec for inclusion unless they do is taking an absolute view on a nuanced topic.

There is no question that all of the COGA SC proposed will not get into WCAG 2.1. Similarly, there is no question whether all of the Low-vision or mobile SC proposed will get into WCAG 2.1 – they will not all get in. Some of each will get in, and WCAG 2.1 will be a improvement over WCAG 2.0 as a result. There is no question as to whether we will meet our deadline – we must if we want to be rechartered after this round, and given that we won’t get everything into WCAG 2.1 we need to be able to recharter for future work.

We have many commenters and observers who are looking forward to our work, but among these are many people who want to see WCAG 2.1 standardize what is implementable based on the technologies that are available today, and we need to work to try to find the right balance between what would be best for users with all different types of disabilities and what is achievable/testable.

Some of the items proposed by task forces may be best accomplished by user agents or assistive technologies, and I think that may be the case for some of the proposed SC. We need to engage in the discussion to figure out the best path forward, and it is difficult and the outcome isn’t pre-determined.

We appreciate all of the efforts of the Task Forces and individual members – we’ve got a lot of work left to do to create a WCAG 2.1 that we can be proud of, even as we recognize its inevitable limitations.

Thanks,
AWK

Andrew Kirkpatrick
Group Product Manager, Standards and Accessibility
Adobe

akirkpat@adobe.com
http://twitter.com/awkawk


From: "lisa.seeman@zoho.com<mailto:lisa.seeman@zoho.com>" <lisa.seeman@zoho.com<mailto:lisa.seeman@zoho.com>>
Date: Wednesday, February 1, 2017 at 09:51
To: WCAG <w3c-wai-gl@w3.org<mailto:w3c-wai-gl@w3.org>>
Subject: Accessible authentication and we need a fundamental change
Resent-From: WCAG <w3c-wai-gl@w3.org<mailto:w3c-wai-gl@w3.org>>
Resent-Date: Wednesday, February 1, 2017 at 09:52

I added the link to the w3c specification  that brought in the first accessible authentication technique. It is in the  comments of the issue.

My 2 cents is if these  COGA SC (Such as Accessible authentication) do not go in,  then WCAG 2.1 can not be the recommended specification for inclusion, because we and anyone paying attention will know, when we publish, that conformant content will not include or be useable by people with cognitive disabilities. To guarantee peoples rights to equal access  following other standards will be much better.

A basic question we need to ask is if we need wcag to enable content to be accessible to people with any cognitive disabilities, and is that an important thing. If we do, we need to find ways to include this stuff, we need to change the focus from saying no to finding solutions to make this work and include them.

If we don't we are wasting our time. we may meet our deadlines but we will achieve little else . ( Please do not suggest moving things to AAA. It is insulting to the user groups excluded.)

I am trying to work on a solution to this, but it must be addressed.

All the best

Lisa Seeman

LinkedIn<http://il.linkedin.com/in/lisaseeman/>, Twitter<https://twitter.com/SeemanLisa>