RE: Should the boxes around blocks of text in the FPWD have Sufficient contrast under the new SC. WAS: Re: CFC: Publish WCAG 2.1 FPWD

+1 to Glenda!!

 

​​​​​* katie *

 

Katie Haritos-Shea 
Principal ICT Accessibility Architect (WCAG/Section 508/ADA/AODA)

 

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NOTE: The content of this email should be construed to always be an expression of my own personal independent opinion, unless I identify that I am speaking on behalf of Knowbility, as their AC Rep at the W3C - and - that my personal email never expresses the opinion of my employer, Deque Systems.

 

From: Glenda Sims [mailto:glenda.sims@deque.com] 
Sent: Thursday, February 23, 2017 12:36 PM
To: White, Jason J <jjwhite@ets.org>
Cc: Alastair Campbell <acampbell@nomensa.com>; David MacDonald <david100@sympatico.ca>; Gregg Vanderheiden RTF <gregg@raisingthefloor.org>; w3c-waI-gl@w3. org <w3c-wai-gl@w3.org>
Subject: Re: Should the boxes around blocks of text in the FPWD have Sufficient contrast under the new SC. WAS: Re: CFC: Publish WCAG 2.1 FPWD

 

Essential is a normative part of the WCAG 2.0 definition.  I agree that it takes more thought to determine if something is essential or not.

 

My simple test is to just ask this, when a client says to me, "Oh, that is not essential.".  I say, "Cool.  Then can you remove it from the page?"  At that point, the client's eyes usually pop wide open...they stammer and say, "Well...ummm...no, it is really helpful."

 

To which I reply, "So, it is essential.  Now let's figure out how to make it accessible to all.  I'm sure we can come up with a universal design solution...if we just think creatively!"

 

So...yes, we might need to get hyper creative for complex graphics (like you might find in Tufte's "Visual Display of Quantitative Information" or the deliciousness that is David McCandless' Information is Beautiful http://www.informationisbeautiful.net/ )

 

So...with the idea...that a picture truly is worth a thousand words, you can't just dismiss a data visualization as non-essential just because you threw a mountain of data at me.  It is the data viz that makes the data make sense!  


Elegant solution - designers can code version 1 of the data viz in any colors they want.  Doesn't even need to meet color contrast, as long as...there is a version of the data viz that does meet color contrast that is available.  My thought pattern...perhaps the designers will embrace the color contrast challenge and discover that the color contrast version is the only version they want to make...because it is better (you know...the whole "make it work for everyone from the start" kind of awesome.)

 

Yes, I'm respectful of the fact that designers may want to choose to post 2 versions of a data viz (one with less than ideal color contrast and one without)....I don't ever want to be the girl that took the color choices away from a designer.

 

Onwards!

G

 

 

 

 




glenda sims    |   team a11y lead   |    deque.com <http://deque.com>     |    512.963.3773      

web for everyone. web on everything. -  w3 goals

 

On Thu, Feb 23, 2017 at 9:31 AM, White, Jason J <jjwhite@ets.org <mailto:jjwhite@ets.org> > wrote:



> -----Original Message-----
> From: Alastair Campbell [mailto:acampbell@nomensa.com <mailto:acampbell@nomensa.com> ]
> Sent: Thursday, February 23, 2017 10:05 AM
> I would separate "X is essential to Y', from "essential" in the more general sense.
>
> At one end of the scale, this is quite specific:
> "graphical objects that are essential for understanding"
>
> It is about an attribute of the content, not the user's goal or the pages's
> purpose.
> ​
> For me, it gets shakey is when you have to make assumptions about what the
> user (or site owner?) thinks is essential for that page. (Which Jason covered so I
> won't expound on that.)
[Jason] This is the right distinction to draw. I think "essential to an activity", when used as an exception to a requirement, is defensible in that it only applies to content that has a single, clear purpose which would be undermined by the requirement. For example, timing may be essential to certain activities, but the exception only applies where there is an unambiguous, intended purpose.
For the reasons that we've discussed, I think broader uses of "essential", "critical", and similar terms are highly problematic.



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