RE: [Editorial] Proposed clarification to checkpoint 12.5 (documentation of changes that affect accessibility)

Ian,

The only weakness of this checkpoint that I see is the law of unintended
consequences:  You don't always know how a change affects accessibility.
Certainly, we want to know how you have improved accessibility, but would
any developer deliberately decrease access?  Changes in that direction would
be inadvertant, and probably not known.

I'm pretty sure, for example, that when IE 4.0 was released, it wasn't
deliberate that it broke access.

So, if a developer did something that changed access accidentally, would the
developer lose conformance when a user contested this?

Denis


-----Original Message-----
From: w3c-wai-ua-request@w3.org [mailto:w3c-wai-ua-request@w3.org]On
Behalf Of Ian Jacobs
Sent: Friday, April 13, 2001 8:21 PM
To: w3c-wai-ua@w3.org
Subject: [Editorial] Proposed clarification to checkpoint 12.5
(documentation of changes that affect accessibility)


Hello,

In the 9 April draft [1], checkpoint 12.5 reads:

   "12.5 In each software release, document all changes that
         affect accessibility."

I think this checkpoint is could be interpreted as making
a requirement that spans more than one release of a user
agent. This would make conformance for a specific release
of a user agent impossible.

Instead, I propose the following language, which I consider
an editorial clarification:

   "12.5 Document all changes from the previous version
         of the user agent that affect accessibility."

Comments:

 - The term "release" has been replaced by "version", which
   is the term used in the section on conformance.

 _ Ian

[1] http://www.w3.org/TR/2001/WD-UAAG10-20010409/
--
Ian Jacobs (jacobs@w3.org)   http://www.w3.org/People/Jacobs
Tel:                         +1 831 457-2842
Cell:                        +1 917 450-8783

Received on Saturday, 14 April 2001 08:18:47 UTC