RE: A Guide to the "Essential" survey

All of WCAG 2.0 uses “essentia’” as an exception in only 4 success criteria (and 1 incorrectly in “No Timing”).  In 2.1, we’ve introduced it 11 more times (half of the new criteria).

I’d argue we need to re-evaluate each use with a detailed understanding of the definition and ensure that:

1.      We have clear examples where it is supposedly applicable, and

2.      Those examples actually cannot conform in any other way per the definition.
Anything less is just tossing in subjective words to make us feel better.  We owe it to the end beneficiaries of this document to follow our own acceptance criteria.  There’s no reason not to start with the incorrect uses identified.


From: David MacDonald [mailto:david100@sympatico.ca]
Sent: Thursday, October 05, 2017 9:52 AM
To: White, Jason J <jjwhite@ets.org>
Cc: Alastair Campbell <acampbell@nomensa.com>; Repsher, Stephen J <stephen.j.repsher@boeing.com>; WCAG <w3c-wai-gl@w3.org>
Subject: Re: A Guide to the "Essential" survey

> [Jason] I’m supportive of the normative change. I also think that replacing “essential” with what David proposes constitutes a normative change in its own right, as it somewhat clarifies the scope of the exception instead of leaving it ill-defined (as the word “essential” does).

I attempted to replace the word essential with the first half of
​our
 definition
​ of "essential"​


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On Thu, Oct 5, 2017 at 9:37 AM, White, Jason J <jjwhite@ets.org<mailto:jjwhite@ets.org>> wrote:


From: David MacDonald [mailto:david100@sympatico.ca<mailto:david100@sympatico.ca>]
Sent: Thursday, October 5, 2017 9:25 AM
Jason says:
>  I don’t think it’s a good idea to qualify requirements in this way without persuasive, concrete examples that demonstrate the need for the qualification.

If we don't do that, then ALL content and functionality will be required to work, which increases the requirements. This is a normative change, to an SC that had consensus.

[Jason] I’m supportive of the normative change. I also think that replacing “essential” with what David proposes constitutes a normative change in its own right, as it somewhat clarifies the scope of the exception instead of leaving it ill-defined (as the word “essential” does).
Alastair says
> I’d note for this one that we’ve been through the top 50 websites to test it, and found relatively few issues. E.g. certain boxes in google search results with a fixed height would start overlaping. Most content (even navigation menus) were fine, which surprised me a bit.

I'm not sure in the real world what the implications are. This is new territory. We want this standard to be widely adopted for all types of content. I think it's imprudent to remove an exception for non essential content.  and I think its a normative change that should be evaluated separate from an omnibus pull request.
[Jason] I regard all but the most trivial changes of wording as normative – even if the intent is to clarify the scope of an exception or qualification. Thus, I don’t think trying to introduce this as a supposedly non-normative change is feasible.
If we need a separate CfC for each of the substantive changes (i.e., those which don’t simply link to the term “essential” in the glossary), then so be it.


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