Re: Compromise on Numbering: Changing 11 AAA numbers solves the level problem

On 20/09/2017 9:10 AM, David MacDonald wrote:
> If we do that I think should start referring to the numbers as ID#s. 
> Its a change in layout because WCAG 2 used the numbers as "Outline" 
> mode to order them. The new layout would be changing that "ID" mode as 
> unique identifiers but not the common way of referring to them by lay 
> people. I'm OK with that change but I think we should articulate it.
We should not refer to numbers as IDs. Numbers are a terribly brittle 
way to ID something, and we have much better IDs already in the spec. In 
WCAG 2.0 the ID for SC 1.1.1 is "text-equiv-all"; in WCAG 2.1 we base 
the ID on the SC title so it's "non-text-content". In both cases there 
is a lot of infrastructure built around those IDs, and no infrastructure 
built around the numbers.

I know I'm going to lose the debate on numbers, where my position is 
that they are meaningless and we should number things as appropriate to 
*this* spec, but we should not attempt to solve concerns with numbers by 
declaring them as IDs when they are not and we already have better, more 
stable IDs.

Michael