Re: Accessibility and Conformance, etc.

Charles McCathieNevile wrote:
> 
> Errrm,
> 
> we are requiring the DOM as the API that User Agents support for
> HTML/XML. Over the last couple of months (if I recall correctly, and I may be
> wrong) we in fact decided against requiring other forms of access, becuase
> the DOM was sufficient). Effectively that means that either assistive
> technologies implement the relevant bits of the DOM, or they simply ignore
> the guidelines and do their own thing in conjunction with manufacturers of
> user agents, doesn't it?

Yes, if I understand what you mean.

The short explanation is:

1) This document is not meant for ATs, it's meant for graphical
user agents intended to work with ATs.

2) This document does not prevent AT developers from claiming
conformance.
But based on the requirements of the document and what we heard from
AT developers (e.g., about implementing the DOM) that's unlikely to
happen.

 - Ian
 
> Charles McCN
> 
> On Mon, 21 Aug 2000, Ian Jacobs wrote:
> 
>   Eric and I just finished a conversation about his proposals and
>   I would like to summarize what I believe to be our agreement about
>   the proposals. I am snipping all of the suggestions where we agreed to
>   no change in the document.
> [snip]
>   We agreed that not only should the document focus on general purpose
>   user agents, that it is very unlikely that assistive technology
>   developers
>   will be interested in making conformance claims. Here is the question:
>   if you are a component that is part of a conformance claim, do you have
>   to satisfy all of the requirements of the document? In the simplest
>   model,
>   the answer is yes: you have to allow the user keyboard access to
>   functionalities, content that is handled by the component has to be
>   available
>   through the DOM, the user interface needs to be controllable through an
>   API, the user must be able to control styles, the documentation must
>   conform to WCAG, etc. [There may be some checkpoints that wouldn't apply
>   to individual components but only to the entirety of the subject of the
>   claim. Which checkpoints are these?]
> 
> [and in particular:]
> 
>   This means that an assistive technology that would be part of a claim
>   would have to implement the DOM, etc. and this is not what we intend
>   with this document. We don't prevent that, but the document is clearly
>   not meant to make these requirements on assistive technologies.
> 
>   Proposed: Just make this clear in the abstract, the introduction,
>   and in section 3 on conformance. Say clearly that these guidelines
>   are not meant for evaluations of assistive technologies.
> 

-- 
Ian Jacobs (jacobs@w3.org)   http://www.w3.org/People/Jacobs
Tel:                         +1 831 457-2842
Cell:                        +1 917 450-8783

Received on Tuesday, 22 August 2000 00:41:14 UTC