Re: Political use of the guidelines

Hi, John
I understand what you mean about W3C releasing recommendations and not
having any enforcement power.  However, my impression is that
regulations could have a greater impact on developers than guidelines.
For example, if in the US the access board specifies what an accessible
browser must contain for the entities covered by 508, developers who
want to market their browser to these entities will do their best to
ensure that their browsers comply.  If regulations are developed which
are inconsistent with the guidelines, how important are the guidelines?
By developing an appendix or perhaps a separate document on using the
guidelines for developing regulations, we might be making life a little
easier for developers, regulation writers and disabled browser users.

I'm not sure that the other projects taken on by the W3C may have the
save level of susceptibility of being turned into regulation or
law.  The W3C may not understand how there can be a greater chance
of this occuring with regards to browsers as a consequence of
legislative activities related to accessibility.

Scott

> This is not the appopriate list for discussing legal issues related to the
> W3C UA guidelines.  The W3C releases recommendations, and does not have any
> enforcement mechanism to legally force any comapny to use it's
> recommendations.  We want use our resouces to focus on improving the
> accessibility of WWW technology and not directing our limited resources
> trying to predict any future political use or non-use of the guidelines by
> any country.  Remmember our group serves on behalf of the W3C advisory
> group.  If they feel the guidelines are being politicized, they would
> probably review our charter.
> 
> The chair and editor,
> Jon

Received on Monday, 28 September 1998 13:11:23 UTC