RE: Guidelines vs Standards (was Checkpoint 3.3)

The process which exists for requesting changes in the guidelines is to write
to the working group at w3c-wai-gl@w3.org which is a list archived at
http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/w3c-wai-gl

However, the argument that detracting from the presentation of a page in
older browsers is more important than removing significant barriers to users
with disabilities being able to read the page would need to be presented, as
it has not yet.

On Tue, 20 Jul 1999, Bruce Bailey wrote:
[among other things]  
  Sadly, I am not comfortable advocating for anything stricter than Single-A 
  compliance at this time.  As others have pointed out, there are two too 
  many Priority 2 items (3.3 and 3.7, the requirement for support of CSS and 
  <Q> in particular) that, if followed, detract from a page's presentation 
  with older and current browsers!
  
  Is there any mechanism to petition that these two items in particular be 
  down graded to Priority 3?
  
  The WCAG uses the phrase "until user agents" frequently.  It seems to me 
  that this same conditional should be applied to 3.3 and 3.7 in terms of 
  assuaging priority.  For example, "3.7 Mark up quotations. Do not use 
  quotation markup for formatting effects such as indentation. [Priority 3 
  until user agents better support the <Q> tag, otherwise Priority 2]".  3.3 
  might be better as a conditional too:  "3.3 Use style sheets to control 
  layout and presentation. [Priority 2 for the strict HTML 4.0 DTD, Priority 
  3 otherwise]"
  I am one of those who frequently argues FOR the merits of non-subjective 
  use of tools like Bobby and WCAG.  My particular bit of hypocrisy may well 
  be driven by the fact that my perfectly accessible pages are only Single-A 
  compliant -- and I am shamed by this!
  
  Sincerely,
  
  Bruce Bailey
  http://www.dors.state.md.us/

Received on Tuesday, 20 July 1999 18:27:05 UTC