Call for Review: Working Draft of Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 2.0

Dear WAI Interest Group Participants,

A new Working Draft of the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 2.0 (WCAG
2.0) as well as five supporting documents were published 30 June 2005.
The Web Content Accessibility Guidelines Working Group (WCAG WG) invites
you to comment on these documents. W3C Working Drafts provide opportunities
for public comment during the development of a specification. Please send
comments to the public comments mailing list by 2 August 2005:
     public-comments-wcag20@w3.org

WCAG 2.0 addresses accessibility of Web content for people with
disabilities. It will apply to a wider range of Web technologies than WCAG
1.0 and is intended to be understandable to a wider audience.

Since the previous public Working Draft of WCAG 2.0, published on 19 November
2004, the WCAG WG has addressed at least 300 public comments and is still
addressing additional comments. A good place to start a review of WCAG 2.0 is
with the "Introduction to Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.0
Working Draft Documents." The Introduction illustrates the relationships 
between
WCAG 2.0 and the supporting documents, and links to the current version of 
each
document. The Introduction is available at:
     <http://www.w3.org/WAI/intro/wcag20>

The documents published on 30 June 2005:
     - Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 2.0
       <http://www.w3.org/TR/2005/WD-WCAG20-20050630/>
     - Web Content Accessibility Guideline 2.0 Checklist
       <http://www.w3.org/TR/2005/WD-WCAG20-20050630/checklist> - Table
       <http://www.w3.org/TR/2005/WD-WCAG20-20050630/checklist-linear> - Linear
     - General Techniques for WCAG 2.0
       <http://www.w3.org/TR/2005/WD-WCAG20-GENERAL-20050630/>

Note:  No substantial changes were made to the following documents
due to the focus on addressing comments received on Guidelines and Success
Criteria.  Issues raised with previous drafts will be handled in the next 
publication.
     - HTML Techniques for WCAG 2.0
       <http://www.w3.org/TR/2005/WD-WCAG20-HTML-TECHS-20050630/>
     - CSS Techniques for WCAG 2.0
       <http://www.w3.org/TR/2005/WD-WCAG20-CSS-TECHS-20050630/>
     - Client-side Scripting Techniques for WCAG 2.0:
       <http://www.w3.org/TR/2005/WD-WCAG20-SCRIPT-TECHS-20050630/>

The Working Group is interested in discussion of the following questions.

1. In general, is this WCAG 2.0 Working Draft easy to understand?
	Please identify phrases that are difficult to understand. Please
	suggest wording for the Working Group to consider.

2. Instead of assuming that end-users have browsers that conform to the
	User Agent Accessibility Guidelines as we did in the 19 November 2004
	Working Draft, this draft relies on authors declaring a "baseline."
	Baselines may also be set by company policy, customers or governments. 
While we
	have not yet provided all of the support materials needed to use baseline,
	we have worked on the definitions and incorporated it into some success
	criteria.  The WCAG WG is interested in feedback about the baseline
	approach that will allow authors the flexibility to use new technologies
	while providing information about making good choices for which technologies
	are most widely available and accessible.

3. In WCAG 1.0, valid content was a Priority 2 requirement. In previous
	Working Drafts of WCAG 2.0, valid content was a Level 1 Success Criterion.
	The WCAG WG has recently considered proposals to move the validity
	success criterion to Level 2 and to consider an alternative requirement 
for Level 1.
	Due to issues raised during a spirited discussion, no Success Criteria 
have been included in this
	Working Draft. Instead, the draft links to a summary of the issues, 
background,
	and discussion questions.  Please read and comment on the summary at:
		<http://www.w3.org/WAI/GL/2005/06/validity-accessibility.html>

4. This is the first public Working Draft of WCAG 2.0 Checklist.  While we 
intend
	to provide a printable version and group Success Criteria by Level,
	is the information presented clearly? Is this format an effective tool to help
	determine conformance to WCAG 2.0? Please use the WCAG 2.0 Checklist
	to a review a site and provide feedback about the usefulness of the Checklist
	for a review process.

5. There is an ongoing discussion about how many levels of conformance
	should be provided in WCAG 2.0.  Primarily, the discussion centers around the
	question of 2 levels or 3 levels. The draft links to a summary of the issues,
	background, and discussion questions.  Please read and comment on the
	summary at:
		<http://www.w3.org/WAI/GL/2005/06/conformance-issues-overview.html>


Please send your comments by 2 August 2005 to:
       public-comments-wcag20@w3.org
The archive for that mailing list is available at:
      <http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-comments-wcag20/>


When sending comments, please:
       - State the issue as clearly and simply as possible.
       - Provide links to specific examples or references.
       - If possible, suggest solutions.
       - Remember that the Working Group welcomes volunteers
         to help with the work.

When waiting for responses to comments:
       - You can track your issue in the open issues list
<http://trace.wisc.edu/bugzilla_wcag/condensedreports/wcag2_issues.php>
       - Follow up on the mailing list if you don't find your issue in the
         open issues list.

Please let us know if you have any questions.  Additional information on the
Working Group is available at:
     <http://www.w3.org/WAI/GL/>

Note:
The feedback we receive on this draft will help us determine how close we 
are to
publishing a Last Call Working Draft.  Once we enter Last Call it will take
several months to progress through  the W3C Recommendation Track.
Until WCAG 2.0 becomes a W3C Recommendation, WCAG 1.0 will continue to
be the current and stable document to use. If your site currently conforms to
WCAG 1.0, be assured  that conformance to WCAG 2.0 will not require a
complete redesign of your  site but it will likely require some tweaks.

Note:
This message may be circulated to other lists, avoiding cross-postings
where possible.

Thank you in advance for your comments,

Wendy Chisholm - W3C Team Contact for WCAG WG
Gregg Vanderheiden - Co-chair of WCAG WG, and Director of Trace R&D Center
John Slatin - Co-chair of WCAG WG, and Director of the Accessibility 
Institute at UT
Judy Brewer - Director, Web Accessibility Initiative, W3C

Received on Friday, 1 July 2005 23:40:43 UTC