- From: David Woolley <david@djwhome.demon.co.uk>
- Date: Wed, 8 Jun 2005 21:39:55 +0100 (BST)
- To: w3c-wai-ig@w3.org
> The answer, of course, is that industry and governments use Standards all The demand comes from business rather more than governments. Legislators often produce laws that depend on concepts like "reasonable force" or "without reasonable cause", or even "dangerous" or "reckless driving". I believe the UK disabilty legislation has terms like "equivalent service" and "not excessive". The UK government also publishes guidelines on that legislation, which include the warning that they are not a statement of the law. (The US Section 508 does seem to have moved towards the testable, but I seem to remember that the ADA is still subjective.) Businesses want testable rules because most businesses aim to operate on the very edge of what is legal (or slightly over the edge - how many offices have you seen where firedoors are never left propped open unattended?). If they have to make judgements, they risk operating too far within the law, which they perceive as reducing their profits compared with other businesses that judge the boundary more accurately. Laws which regulate businesses generally only exist because the businesses would not otherwise do what the law demand. Having a law puts every business at a disadvantage, because they all have to bear the compliance costs, whereas a business won't voluntarily put itself at a perceived disadvantage. Industry guidelines often exist as self regulation, simply to prevent a government from regulating. The other people who like to have absolute standards are testing tool developers. Consultants also like them because it de-skills the job. Civil services may need to use the standards because they are subject to the law or have to set an example, but that is not the same as a government. > So, the issue here for me (as both a regulator and an implementer) is that > the WAI has consistently failed to write measurable, testable standards FOR > THE WEB TECHNOLOGIES WITHIN THE W3C PURVIEW. The guidelines are, by Absolutely testable standards should form part of the technology standard, not a separate accessibility one, e.g. HTML mandates img elements have alt attributes. However, where the real problems arise is in the subjective areas. It is easy to comply with having an alt attribute (even if many sites don't) but it requires human judgement to decide whether the value of the attribute is appropriate, and that is not something that can be done with absolute repeatability. Many pages that comply with the testable "must have alt" rules do not comply when you make a human judgement about whether the attribute is appropriate.
Received on Wednesday, 8 June 2005 21:30:14 UTC