Re: "untill user agents" retired?

Hi David,

At 13:07 31/01/2006, David Poehlman wrote:
<blockquote>
I've seen some talk recently that we no longer use "until user
agents".  On what basis has it been decided that this is retired if
it has and if there are any that are left, which ones?
</blockquote>

WCAG 1.0 has not been revised or republished, so strictly speaking, nothing 
has been "retired". However, some "until user agent" clauses are now 
considered satisfied.
The current mapping between WCAG 1.0 checkpoints and WCAG 2.0 success 
criteria (http://www.w3.org/WAI/GL/2005/11/23-mapping.html) - which is not 
a normative document! - contains some notes on this.

For checkpoint 7.3 (Until user agents allow users to freeze moving content, 
avoid movement in pages), there is a note below the WCAG 2.0 success 
criterion: "The 'until user agents' clause has been satisfied, so it is no 
longer necessary to avoid movement altogether, as long as authors don't do 
anything to interfere with the user's ability to pause the content."

For checkpoint 10.5 (Until user agents ... render adjacent links 
distinctly, include non-link, printable characters (surrounded by spaces) 
between adjacent links), a note below the WCAG 2.0 success criterion says: 
"this technique is no longer needed for user agents but may be useful for 
people with cognitive disabilities."

For checkpoint 1.5 (Until user agents render text equivalents for 
client-side image map links, provide redundant text links for each active 
region of a client-side image map): "this is no longer required because of 
advances in user agents."

For checkpoint 10.3 (Until user agents ... render side-by-side text 
correctly, provide a linear text alternative (... for all tables that lay 
out text in parallel, word-wrapped columns): "WCAG 1.0 Checkpoint 10.3 is 
no longer required for conformance to WCAG 2.0."

As I wrote, the mapping is not normative and will be superseded when newer 
drafts of WCAG 2.0 are published.

Regards,

Christophe Strobbe


-- 
Christophe Strobbe
K.U.Leuven - Departement of Electrical Engineering - Research Group on 
Document Architectures
Kasteelpark Arenberg 10 - 3001 Leuven-Heverlee - BELGIUM
tel: +32 16 32 85 51
http://www.docarch.be/ 


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Received on Tuesday, 31 January 2006 13:37:00 UTC