Re: Assistive Technology Detection

Phil, (Bob)
My reading of the WCAG 2.0 documents is that "conformance claims" can involve stating web technologies relied upon but these "conformance claims" are optional.  Conformance itself, however, has 5 required parts, with part 4 requiring web content to only rely on accessibly supported content to meet the success criteria ("Only accessibility-supported ways of using technologies are relied upon to satisfy the success criteria.")  
From the reference document, it seem that AT's and user agents determine whether something is accessibility supported or not: "a Web content technology is 'accessibility supported' when users' assistive technologies will work with the Web technologies AND when the accessibility features of mainstream technologies will work with the technology" (caps and emphasis in the original). 
The technical definition of accessibility-supported has two parts and I believe part 2.d addresses Bob's point about poverty levels, as do other parts in the reference document.

 

    On Thursday, January 25, 2018 10:42 PM, Phill Jenkins <pjenkins@us.ibm.com> wrote:
 

 | howcan a site or app know 
| what web contenttechnologies to serve up 
| that are accessiblysupported 
| without knowingthe user agents and AT the user is using?  

My understandingis that for a site or app to claim conformance, the claimant has to knowor the claim has to state which accessibility supported technologies wererelied upon in the conformance testing, not in what the user is using afterthe conformance testing is done.  Of course what users actually usesignificantly influences what are the definitive list of accessibilitysupported technologies.  There is no requirement to "serve upthat technology" to claim conformance. 

For example, ifthe operating system and browser platform support high contrast technology,the claim can be made that the site or app conforms (or still conforms)with all the WCAG Success Criteria when the user is relying on those accessibilitysupported features in the operating system and browser platform.  Thesite or app conformance would fail if the 1.3.1 Info and relationship successcriteria fails because some labels or headings "disappeared"when turning on the high contrast accessibility features supported in theOS & Browser. 
___________
Regards,
Phill Jenkins
pjenkins@us.ibm.com
SeniorEngineer & Accessibility Executive
IBM Research Accessibility
linkedin.com/in/philljenkins/



From:       MarkWeiler <mweiler@alumni.sfu.ca>
To:       DavidWoolley <forums@david-woolley.me.uk>, "w3c-wai-ig@w3.org"<w3c-wai-ig@w3.org>
Date:       01/25/201806:52 PM
Subject:       Re:Assistive Technology Detection



Related to AT detectionis how can a site or app know what web content technologies to serve upthat are accessibly supported without knowing the user agents and AT theuser is using?  

Accessibility supportedis a requirementfor conformance.  And researchfindingsshow differences in how browsers and ATs are supporting web content technologies.





On Thursday, January25, 2018 7:08 PM, David Woolley <forums@david-woolley.me.uk> wrote:


The dangers I seeare:

1) this will reinforce the idea that the only disabled people are those
that use JAWs.

2) it will probably have a similar effect to early mobile web sites, 
which tended to be cleaner, and easier to use that the main web site. 
That may mean that the main web site gets more difficult to use, and you
won't be able to do the equivalent of using wap instead of www.

On 25/01/18 19:18, accessys@smart.netwrote:
> 
> counter to concept of accessibility, one should not need to identify
> and personally I would be ,opposed to it.