New guideline text for 2.1 and 2.2

My thoughts on new text for 2.1 and 2.2 are the following:


2.1 Generate standard markup

The first step towards accessibility is full compliance with standards.
Observation of standards permits interoperability, whereby documents and
content may be displayed by a wide variety of technologies. (ed. needs
work)

Checkpoints:

2.1.1: [Priority 1] (NEW - adapted from Charles, discussed on call)
Make use of W3C standard recommendations wherever possible.

2.1.2: [Priority 1] (was 2.1.1)
Ensure that content is created in accordance with W3C specifications (or
other standards when applicable). 

2.1.2: [Priority 1] (NEW - discussed on call)
Ensure that imported content conforms with W3C specifications (or other
standards where applicable)

***********************

2.2 Support all markup accessibility features

An authoring tool may satisfy Guideline 2.1 if it supports (generates,
converts, processes, etc.) valid markup from a only a select subset of a
complete language specification. For example, an HTML 3.2 generating
tool may only produce valid HTML 4.0 markup, but it will not be capable
of producing certain new elements, attributes, etc. The next step
towards accessibility requires that all the markup accessibility
features of a language be included within the author tool supported
subset of that language.

Checkpoints:

2.2.1: [Priority 1] 
Support all accessibility features that have been defined for the markup
language(s) generated by the tool. 

2.2.2: [Priority 1] 
Support all accessibility features for the markup language(s) processed
by the tool. 

Techniques:

Markup accessibility features vary with different markup languages and
are modified or updated periodically as the markup languages develop.
Therefore, listing the accessibility features of specific languages lies
beyond the scope of this document. However, an informative list of
documents that address markup accessibility features and accessible Web
authoring practices follows:

Web Content Accessibility Features:
(The actual accessible markup solutions)
     General: Checkpoints for Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 
     HTML4: HTML4 Accessibility Improvements 
     CSS2: CSS2 Accessibility Improvements 
     SMIL:
     MathML:

Web Content Implementation Priorities:
(The priorities placed on the accessibility markup solutions)
     General: Web Content Accessibility Guidelines

-- 
Jan Richards
jan.richards@utoronto.ca
ATRC
University of Toronto

Received on Wednesday, 24 February 1999 19:55:46 UTC