Re: Encouraging the use of technologies designed to support accessibility

I support this, it might clean up the crazy messing up of ARIA I see
everywhere ... here's a rough wording for an SC.

****

When accessibility-enhancing Web technologies are used to increase the
level of accessibility of a page they are used according to specification,
unless they are used in a way that is otherwise accessibility supported.


****


Definition of accessibility-enhancing Web technology:



   - Is used by user agents and assistive technologies to improve the
   accessibility of Web content.
   - States explicitly in its specification that it is designed to improve
   accessibility for users with disabilities.
   - Is designed to complement and to be compatible with the technologies
   that are used to implement the content (i.e., we aren’t requiring the
   author to change their implementation technologies).


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On Fri, Jul 21, 2017 at 12:44 PM, White, Jason J <jjwhite@ets.org> wrote:

> I think we should consider a carefully scoped proposal that in some
> circumstances requires the use of technologies which are specifically
> designed to enhance accessibility. We’re seeing several of these, including
> ARIA, the ARIA Digital Publishing module, work on an ARIA extension for SVG
> (currently stalled), and the COGA personalization proposals, as well as the
> Accessibility Object Model (i.e., an accessibility API for the Web
> platform).
>
>
>
> Roughly, the idea is that accessibility-enhancing Web technologies should
> be used, and used according to specification, where an
> accessibility-enhancing Web technology is defined to be a technology that
>
>    - Is used by user agents and assistive technologies to improve the
>    accessibility of Web content.
>    - States explicitly in its specification that it is designed to
>    improve accessibility for users with disabilities.
>    - Is designed to complement and to be compatible with the technologies
>    that are used to implement the content (i.e., we aren’t requiring the
>    author to change their implementation technologies).
>
> There may need to be an exception to address cases in which departure from
> specifications is necessary, and can be done in an interoperable fashion to
> work around bugs in user agents or assistive technologies.
>
> Also, use of these technologies should only be required in circumstances
> in which their application makes sense, but it’s hard to define what those
> conditions are, as they vary for each of the relevant technologies. The
> specifications are likely to indicate what the technologies should be used
> for, however.
>
> Thus I’m not sure whether this proposal can be made reliably testable.
> It’s much narrower than the WCAG 1.0 “use technologies according to
> specification” mandate, as it applies only to “accessibility-enhancing”
> technologies (markup languages, APIs, metadata formats, etc.). The “used
> according to specification” requirement is supposed to ensure that the
> technologies are used correctly and appropriately, in so far as these
> qualities are mandated by the specification.
>
> In the “personalization” discussion today, the idea underlying this
> proposal attracted some interest, so I’m raising it here to enable others
> to consider wehther some version of it could be brought into shape for WCAG
> 2.1, for a subsequent 2.x release if there are any, or for Silver.
>
>
>
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