RE: CFC - Update SC text Purpose of Controls

-1 for similar reasons to those expressed by other participants. Specifically, without an accompanying definition (e.g., of “conventional purpose”) the success criterion is unclear, of doubtful testability, and totally opaque to anyone who hasn’t been following this conversation in detail – and this includes almost everyone who will ultimately be responsible for setting policy or implementing WCAG.

 

Also, there’s a problem with singular/plural terms in the proposed SC. What is meant is that the purpose of each user interface control that serves a conventional purpose can be programmatically determined, not that there is a single purpose served by all such controls that can be programmatically determined as the proposed text seems to imply.

 

From: Joshue O Connor [mailto:josh@interaccess.ie] 
Sent: Tuesday, November 21, 2017 12:57 PM
To: WCAG <w3c-wai-gl@w3.org>
Subject: CFC - Update SC text Purpose of Controls

 

Call For Consensus — ends Friday November 24th at 1:00 PM Boston time.

The Working Group discussed an update to the Purpose of Controls SC on the call today [1].

The current SC text is:

"In content implemented using markup languages, the conventional name of conventional form fields, conventional buttons or controls, or conventional links can be programmatically determined."


This is to be changed to:

" In content implemented using markup languages, the purpose of user interface components that serve a conventional purpose can be programmatically determined."

If you have concerns about this proposed consensus position that have not been discussed already and feel that those concerns result in you “not being able to live with” this decision, please let the group know before the CfC deadline.

[1] https://www.w3.org/2017/11/21-ag-minutes.html 

-- 
Joshue O Connor
Director | InterAccess.ie