Re: Removing 4.1.1 Parsing from WCAG 2.2

Hi Charles,

There is a nuance to ‘backwards compatible’, which is that WCAG 2.2 would be backwards compatible in terms of accessibility for people with disabilities. Things which have a practical impact are already caught by other SCs (see the mapping doc<https://docs.google.com/document/d/1MJ6FxO7ujQ4X9BQtAnDDoWyvpAKU44MR4h-bob9SG7M/edit>).

What would change is the reporting of results.

Happy to consider updates to the note, which is currently:
> “This criterion was originally adopted to address problems that Assistive Technology had directly parsing HTML. Assistive Technology no longer has any need to directly parse HTML and, consequently, these problems no longer exists. Accessibility errors failed by this criterion also fail other criteria. This criteria no longer has utility and is removed.”

Perhaps we could add: “Conforming to regulations that require older versions of WCAG may still require you to test and report on this criterion.”?

Another factor people should bear in mind: The original intent of 4.1.1 was narrower than some (most?) people’s interpretation of it has been. See https://github.com/w3c/wcag/issues/2525
We will need to do some sort of errata or update for 4.1.1 anyway, either remove it or to make clearer the intended interpretation.

Cheers,

-Alastair


From: Chaals Nevile <charles.nevile@consensys.net>
Date: Friday, 6 January 2023 at 13:19
To: WCAG list (w3c-wai-gl@w3.org) <w3c-wai-gl@w3.org>
Subject: Re: Removing 4.1.1 Parsing from WCAG 2.2
On Friday, 6 January 2023 14:06:16 (+01:00), Wilco Fiers wrote:
We promised WCAG 2.2 would be backward compatible. What I'm hearing you say is that with the current decisions, it won't be.

This is, by far, the best reason NOT to remove 4.1.1 from WCAG 2.2 - and I would not object to a group decision keeping the requirement in, noting that it is explicitly to ensure that conformant WCAG 2.2 documents are conformant to WCAG 2.1 and 2.0, rather than because it still serves a known purpose directly.

However, doing this would push the question of what to do with a requirement that has no benefit onto implementors, and it would be reasonable for many of them to say "it's important to almost-meet WCAG 2.2, but don't worry about 4.1.1". Such an approach would legitimately call into question the quality of our current work. I think that's a worse outcome than deciding we're not going to maintain compatibility after all for a decade-old requirement, since the world has actually changed.

So I am changing my vote on the CfC slightly. I still think endorse removing the requirement to meet 4.1.1, but I think the text should explain more clearly what it was, and that it is required if people want to conform to 2.0/2.1.

cheers

Chaals
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Charles 'Chaals' Nevile
Lead Standards Architect, ConsenSys Inc