Re: free/not free proprietary

By and large I agree with the sentiments expressed by Phill here. In
particular, I have argued, and continue to argue, that WCAG should not be
written primarily as a policy document, but primarily as a technical
specification of how to ensure things are accessible to people with
disabilities - it is for policy organisations to determine whether a
particular need can be met in a aprticular situation, or whether some other
priority justifies excluding people from access in a particular case.

However, I think there is one valid eception to this, and it was the issue
underlying some of this thread.

The issue logged in the WCAG group's issues list as 77 "Documenting
assumptions" - http://www.w3.org/WAI/GL/wcag20-issues#77 is an important one.
Basically, it is a question of where the responsibilities lie between the
browser, author, and user - is it reasonable to require that thue user have
two different browsers available (this justification was used in determining
some priorities for WCAG 1.0), is it reasonable to require authors to assume
that users haven't upgraded their browser in 7 years, despite the fact that
the browser they have is known to cause problems for accessibility, is it
reasonable to provide requirements specifically to cope with bugs in a
particcular browser or assistive technology?

That question does need to be answered, in my opinion, and I think a mre
explicit answer would be helpful. Failing which, we need to document much
more carefully what particular software can and cannot do, for a wide range
of software, to allow authors and users to make informed choices.

cheers

chaals

On Thu, 2 May 2002, Phill Jenkins wrote:
[snip]
  I think the more this list and the W3C working groups bring into
  consideration the policy issues, the more we get away from our charter to
  focus on the technical accessibility issues that need to be solved by the
  author, browser, assistive technology, and end user in concert together.

  Phill Jenkins



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Received on Thursday, 2 May 2002 18:53:06 UTC