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

Dear WAI Interest Group Participants:

A Last Call Working Draft of the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 2.0
(WCAG 2.0) as well as two supporting documents were published 27 April 2006.
W3C strongly encourages broad community review of this Last Call Working
Draft, and submission of comments on any issues which you feel could present
a significant barrier to future adoption and implementation of WCAG 2.0.
(Note that only the WCAG 2.0 is in Last Call and only the WCAG 2.0 will
become a Recommendation.  Understanding WCAG 2.0 and Techniques for WCAG 2.0
are being developed  to support WCAG 2.0, and will be released as Working
Group Notes when WCAG 2.0 becomes a Recommendation.)

In particular, we encourage you to comment on the conformance model and
success criteria. Reviewers are encouraged to provide suggestions for how to
address issues as well as positive feedback, and commitments to implement
the guidelines. This message contains information on the documents and  how
to comment.

Comments should be received on or before 31 May 2006.
Comments should be made in one of four formats:
    * online form,
    * downloadable excel form,
    * downloadable html form, or
    * downloadable text form.
Instructions and downloadable files for all are available at:
<http://www.w3.org/WAI/WCAG20/comments/>

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.

Note:
Until WCAG 2.0 becomes a W3C Recommendation, WCAG 1.0 will continue to be
the current and stable document to use. Most Web sites that conform to WCAG
1.0 should not require significant changes in order to conform to WCAG 2.0,
and may not need any changes.


This 27 April 2006 release of the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 2.0
is a Last Call Working Draft by the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines
Working Group (part of the Web Accessibility Initiative). Publication as a
Last Call Working Draft indicates that the WCAG WG believes it has addressed
all substantive issues and that the document is stable (see below for more
information on subsequent stages). The first public Working Draft of WCAG
2.0 was published 25 January 2001.  Since then, the WCAG WG has published
nine Working Drafts, addressed more than 1,000 issues, and developed a
variety of supporting resources for the guidelines.

A good place to start a review of WCAG 2.0 is with the
"Overview of Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.0 Documents."
The Overview explains the relationships  between WCAG 2.0 and the supporting

documents, and links to the  current version of  each document.
The Overview is available at:
        <http://www.w3.org/WAI/intro/wcag20>

The documents published on 27 April 2006:
        - Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 2.0
          <http://www.w3.org/TR/2006/WD-WCAG20-20060427/>
        - Understanding WCAG 2.0
          <http://www.w3.org/TR/2006/WD-UNDERSTANDING-WCAG20-20060427/>
        - Techniques for WCAG 2.0
          <http://www.w3.org/TR/2006/WD-WCAG20-TECHS-20060427/>

The WCAG WG believes that after Last Call, WCAG 2.0 will be ready to move on
to the remaining stages of the W3C Recommendation Track Process:
  * Candidate Recommendation - when the WCAG WG will collect implementation
experience on use of WCAG 2.0 to design and evaluate Web content for
accessibility;
  * Proposed Recommendation - when W3C will seek endorsement of the
specification from W3C Member organizations;
  * Recommendation - when WCAG 2.0 will be published by   W3C as a technical
report appropriate for widespread deployment and the promotion of W3C's
mission.

Note that the WCAG WG will start collecting implementation examples early in
the Last Call review period. Please visit the WAI home page for more
information. <http://www.w3.org/WAI/>

Additional information about the WCAG WG is available at:
    <http://www.w3.org/WAI/GL/>
A list of changes to WCAG 2.0 since the previous draft is available at:
    <http://www.w3.org/WAI/GL/WCAG20/change-history.html>

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,
University of Wisconsin-Madison
John Slatin - Co-chair of WCAG WG, and Director of the Accessibility
Institute at Univerity of Texas at Austin
Judy Brewer - Director, Web Accessibility Initiative, W3C

Received on Thursday, 27 April 2006 20:01:04 UTC