Subgroups proposal for support personalization and important request from coga

Hi WCAG


 
 A subgroup from last week's Thursday call (Andrew Mike, Chris and John ) have proposed an alternative SC for support personalization. 
  
 
  The most important difference is that they have downgraded it to AAA from AA.
 
   
 
  The COGA task force are torn. On the one hand without this SC many people with cognitive impairments will remain unable to use most web content - that should make it level AA or level A. On the other hand, AAA is better than having no mention of personalization. 
 
   
 
  The resolution from COGA's end is to ask WCAG if there is a way we can make a personalization AA SC, which encourages marking the context of some elements.  We would prefer requiring less at AA, even having loopholes at AA, then requiring more content but at  AAA. However, if there is no way forward at AA we will go with the new proposal. (Ways to move forward could include: further limit the scope; remove level of importance for page comprehension; use and/or add exceptions or anything else for that matter...)
 
   
 
   All the other changes in the proposal are  fine from  COGA's perspectives if WCAG prefers them. (Other differences between the proposals include: the new proposal has a broader scope  and the new proposal  has an exception where the technologies being used do not support personalization metadata. The problem with this is something that can conform and then not conform as technologies change. So in the old wording we had given people a different way to conform in case metadata was not supported.)
 
   
 
  Please could you read the alternative wording bellow and let us know if, in your opinion, there is any way forward at AA. 
 
   
 
   
 
  Option 1  (New AAA proposal)
 
   Personalization Metadata (AAA)
 For pages that contain user interface components, personalization metadata is used to provide contextual information for content, except where the technologies being used do not support personalization metadata.
  
  
 Contextual information (definition):
 Information which provides additional meaning for an object, such as the object’s purpose, level of importance for page comprehension and use, position in a process, relationship to other objects and processes, etc.
  
  
 Option 2 (the existing proposal - AA)
 For pages that contain interactive controls, one of the following is true: 
   a mechanism is available for personalization of content that enables the user to add symbols to common form elements, common navigation elements and common interactive controls OR
 contextual information is available for common form elements, common navigation elements and common interactive controls is programmatically available. 
  
  
 -------------
 For both case we will also want to: 
         Review existing SC for new techniques and/or add COGA-impacting examples to existing techniques to clarify the extent that existing semantics provides benefits to COGA users.
       Add clarifications to the Understanding document for existing SC, if that can help COGA SC to move to A or AA in the upcoming rounds of WCAG development.
       Develop the supplemental document
 
  All the best
 
 Lisa Seeman
 
 LinkedIn, Twitter