RE: [EXTERNAL] Re: question regarding printed PDF documents

The value of a signature is in the act of signing and not necessarily in the character of the mark.

In fact, any mark is sufficient - in Australia, people in asylums for the blind mid-last century were trained to be able to use a writing implement sufficiently well to 'make their mark' 

the matching of signatures is a 'requirement' imposed by financial institutions and carries no legal force. 

And where it still exists in this country it's hardly a rigorous and foolproof process whereby an individual uses their judgement to compare one or more examples to that stored on file.

The characteristics of signatures change with age, with preference, with the day.

As David said, requiring a signature is an anachronism and a feature of organisations with feet of clay.





-----Original Message-----
From: David Woolley <forums@david-woolley.me.uk> 
Sent: Friday, January 19, 2024 10:15 AM
To: w3c-wai-ig@w3.org
Subject: Re: [EXTERNAL] Re: question regarding printed PDF documents

On 18/01/2024 18:58, Jerra Strong wrote:
> I'm still interested while reading through the replies if there is 
> consensus that a form which cannot be digitally filled out or signed (i.e.
> requiring printing of the form) is a legal compliance risk or issue 
> due to accessibility concerns.

I'd suggest that if you force people to physically sign, when that is physically impracticable, they will end up with satisfying your requirement, to them, which defeats the value of the signature as something that can be compared against a specimen, as they may well resort to tools to merge an image, before printing.

Incidentally, in CJK environments, stamps (chops) were traditionally used to sign documents, and, I believe, in the UK companies can still sign, by impressing a relief seal into the paper.  Also, when my father was signing cheques for a large public sector organisation, he used a two colour stamp of his signature.

UK banks, at least seem to accept passwords, and callbacks with code numbers, and one time code generators, as authenticators, and then accept a simply form button press as the confirmation of the transaction.  It seems to me that ink and paper signatures are an obsolescent technology, with limited geographic applicability.

In terms of legislation compliance, I believe the UK requirement is to provide an equivalent service to the standard online one, not to make the standard online one work for everyone.

Received on Friday, 19 January 2024 23:08:39 UTC