Announcement: W3C Promotes User Agent Accesibility Guidelines 1.0 to Proposed Recommendation

W3C is pleased to announce that the User Agent Accessibility Guidelines
have been published as a Proposed Recommendation, and are now under
review by the W3C membership. 

=================
The Document:

  "User Agent Accessibility Guidelines 1.0"

    URI: http://www.w3.org/TR/2000/PR-UAAG10-20000310
    Title page date: 10 March 2000
    Editors: Jon Gunderson, Ian Jacobs

  As a quick reference to the checkpoints defined in the Guidelines,
  note also the appendix checklist, available as a table or list:
    http://www.w3.org/TR/2000/PR-UAAG10-20000310/uaag10-chktable
    http://www.w3.org/TR/2000/PR-UAAG10-20000310/uaag10-chklist

=================
Summary

  The User Agent Accessibility Guidelines 1.0 is the major deliverable
  required by the charter of the User Agent Guidelines Working Group
  The charter is available at:

	http://www.w3.org/WAI/UA/wai-ua-charter

  The guidelines in this document explain to developers how to design
  user agents that are accessible to people with disabilities. User
  agents include graphical desktop browsers, multimedia players, text
  browsers, voice browsers, plug-ins, and other assistive technologies
  that provide access to Web content. While these guidelines primarily
  address the accessibility of general-purpose graphical user agents,
  the principles presented apply to other types of user agents as
  well. Following these principles will help make the Web accessible
  to users with disabilities and will benefit all users.

  The Working Group has published 27 drafts since June 1998,
  including a Last Call Working Draft on 5 November 1999 and
  a Candidate Recommendation on 28 January 2000. 


=================

>From Status of this document, at: 
http://www.w3.org/TR/2000/PR-UAAG10-20000310

   This is the 10 March 2000 Proposed Recommendation of User Agent 
   Accessibility Guidelines 1.0, for review by W3C Members and other 
   interested parties. W3C Advisory Committee Members are invited to 
   send formal review comments to wai-ua-review@w3.org, visible only 
   to the W3C Team, until 7 April 2000. This revision reflects
   resolutions to issues raised during the Candidate Recommendation 
   review period. A history of changes to this document is available 
   on the Web. 

   Note. Three checkpoints in this document (checkpoint 5.1, checkpoint
   5.2, and checkpoint 5.4) refer to the W3C DOM Level 2 [DOM2] 
   specification, which  is a Candidate Recommendation as of 10 March
   2000. The User Agent Guidelines Working Group will be tracking 
   dependencies on that specification as it advances to Proposed 
   Recommendation. 

   Publication as a Proposed Recommendation does not imply endorsement 
   by the W3C Membership. This is still a draft document and may be 
   updated, replaced or obsoleted by other documents at any time. It is 
   inappropriate to cite W3C Proposed Recommendations as other than 
   "work in progress." 

   The public is invited to send comments about this document to the 
   public mailing list w3c-wai-ua@w3.org (public archives). 

   This document has been produced as part of the Web Accessibility
   Initiative. The goals of the User Agent Working Group are described 
   in the charter. A list of the Working Group participants is
   available. 

=================
Results of the Candidate Recommendation Review

The general goal of a W3C Candidate Recommendation review period is to
gain implementation experience and to demonstrate implementation
interoperability. The User Agent Guidelines Working Group approached
the Candidate Recommendation review with the following goals:

  1) To document how some existing user agents satisfy the checkpoints.
     The Working Group's implementation report includes direct input 
     from a number of user agent developers. The report is available at:

     http://www.w3.org/WAI/UA/WD-UAAG10-IMP-20000308/

  2) To document that the W3C DOM will promote interoperability 
     between user agents (e.g., browsers and assistive technologies).
     The Working Group surveyed user agent developers (browsers,
     multimedia players, and assistive technology developers)
     and solicited reviews of the Guidelines with this question
     in mind. Information about reviewers and their comments
     is available at:

	http://www.w3.org/WAI/UA/2000/01/reviewers-cr
     
	The reviews of the DOM requirements of Guideline 5 raised
     a number of issues that the Working Group resolved and
     documented in its issues list.

     Note: Three checkpoints in this document (checkpoint 5.1,
     checkpoint 5.2, and checkpoint 5.4) refer to the W3C DOM Level 2
     specification, which is a Candidate Recommendation as of
     10 March 2000. The User Agent Guidelines Working Group will be
     tracking dependencies on that specification as it advances to
     Proposed Recommendation. Should the User Agent Guidelines
     be approved as a Recommendation, the User Agent 
     Guidelines Working Group expects to request this status
     once the DOM Level 2 specification has become a Proposed 
     Recommendation.

  3) To revise the Techniques Document. The Techniques Document
     suggests some implementation ideas for satisfying the 
     checkpoints in the Guidelines document. The Working Group 
     intends to publish the Techniques Document as a W3C Note 
     when and if the guidelines become a Recommendation. 
     Refer to the revised Working Draft at:

     http://www.w3.org/TR/2000/WD-UAAG10-TECHS-20000310

=================
Additional Support Materials

  List of Document Changes. 
    http://www.w3.org/WAI/UA/wai-ua-wd-changes

  Resolved Issues List. 
    http://www.w3.org/WAI/UA/2000/03/issues-linear-20000307

  User Agent Responsibilities. This document explains how
    Working Group decided that the requirements in the guidelines
    were appropriate for general purpose user agents.
    http://www.w3.org/WAI/UA/2000/03/ua-resp-20000308

  Impact Matrix. This document explains which audiences are
    most likely to benefit from each checkpoint. 
    http://www.w3.org/WAI/UA/2000/03/WD-UAAG10-impact-matrix-20000309

=================
Minority objections

  During last call, the Chair registered one minority objection
  to the resolution of an issue about documentation of input 
  configurations. The minority objection is documented at:

  http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/w3c-wai-ua/2000JanMar/0178.html

=================
Review Process

During the next four weeks, the W3C Advisory Committee will review the
UAAG 1.0 Proposed recommendation and send comments as to its
disposition, according to the W3C Process, section 6.2.4:
http://www.w3.org/Consortium/Process/Process-19991111/tr.html#RecsPR

6.2.4 Proposed Recommendations (PR)

Requirements for Entrance 
	The Director must be satisfied that the Candidate Recommendation 
	has a sufficient level of implementation experience or requires 
	immediate Advisory Committee review. 

Associated activities 
	The Working Group requests political and promotional support from 
	the Advisory Committee. 
       
Duration 
	The duration is specified as part of the request for Advisory 
	Committee review. The review period may not be less than four weeks. 

Next State 
	Upon Director approval based on Advisory Committee review a Proposed 
	Recommendation is advanced to Recommendation. Otherwise it reverts to 
     Working Draft for further work. 

A Proposed Recommendation is believed by the Working Group to meet the
requirements of the Working Group's charter and to adequately address
dependencies from the W3C technical community and comments from external
reviewers. The Director issues a call for review of a Proposed
Recommendation (accompanied by other materials such as documented
minority opinions, implementation status, etc.) for political and
promotional support and feedback from the Advisory Committee. The review
period may not be less than four weeks. 

Although the Advisory Committee may also comment on technical aspects of
a specification, most technical issues should have already been resolved
at this phase. There is no requirement that a Candidate Recommendation
have two independent and interoperable implementations to become a
Proposed Recommendation. However, such experience is strongly encouraged
and will generally strengthen its case before the Advisory Committee.

The editors of the Proposed Recommendation must respond to substantive
comments from the Advisory Committee until the end of the review period.

No sooner than two weeks after the end of the review period, the
Director announces the outcome of the proposal to the Advisory
Committee. The Director may:

                1.Issue the document as a Recommendation. 
                2.Issue the document as a Recommendation with 
			  minor changes indicated. 
                3.Return the document for work as a Working Draft, 
			  with a request to the editors to address certain issues. 
                4.Abandon the document and remove it from the W3C
agenda. 

Public comments are welcome, and may be sent to w3c-wai-ua@w3.org.

for Tim-Berners-Lee, Director

Janet Daly, Head of Public Relations

Received on Friday, 10 March 2000 14:29:44 UTC