Re: CFC - Transition UPDATED WCAG 2.1 Editor's Draft to Candidate Recommendation

On 28/01/2018 23:22, Katie Haritos-Shea wrote:
> KHS: I hope this WG thinks long and hard about agile technical standards 
> that could become components of civil rights - and whether that language 
> that is 'good enough' or 'all that we can agree on today' meets that bar.

We did not use an agile methodology. We tried to adopt an incremental 
release cycle (an update every 18 months, as opposed to a complete 
rewrite every 10 years), but that by no means qualifies as agile.

An incremental release cycle is about doing less, more often, not more, 
less often. The quality of each SC is the same whichever approach you 
take. The problem is that we tried to do too much because we were still 
stuck in the 2.0 mindset.

> *<< KHS:  Ultimately we, the WG, were the arbiters of how much time we 
> wanted to allow. Had we together made the point to the AC that one of 
> the most stable standards developed by the W3C in its history, that had 
> successfully become de-facto civil rights around the world - could be 
> iterated more quickly - but could not be iterated like a back-end 
> browser spec - because - as the actual language of each individual 
> requirement, if successful, might ultimately need to meet a legislative 
> bar as well - the membership could have handled and understood that 
> distinction - 

Many of the Ac supported the charter and the 2.1 timetable precisely 
because of legislation. It's just that they were thinking about 
legislation in the European Union, not the United States.

Europe has a population of 749 million (compared to 324 million in the 
US), so it's hard to argue that releasing 2.1 in time to become part of 
the new EU legislation somehow undermines the civil rights movement. If 
the WG and the AC hadn't supported that plan, there would be none of the 
new SC in the EU legislation at all.

Léonie.



-- 
@LeonieWatson @tink@toot.cafe Carpe diem

Received on Monday, 29 January 2018 21:27:44 UTC