Re: User Agent Last Call Period Extended to 14 May 2001

Dear UAAG Committee,

Thank you for the opportunity to review and comment on these
guidelines, they have come a long way. Please don't hesitate to send me
any comments or questions you have on Sun Microsystem's review of the
User Agent Accessibility Guidelines.

Sun Microsystems requests that you consider the comments below. Sun
Microsystems supports the W3C's next step intentions for these guidelines.

Earl Johnson
Accessibility Program Office
Sun Microsytems

--------------------

Sun Microsystem's Comments for the User Agent Accessibility Guidelines.

Guideline 2
Nothing about enabling keyboard navigation of content is mentioned
here. This is an important aspect of content access but it doesn't seem
to be covered in this guideline. The suggestion here is to explicitly
mention somewhere in this guideline that keyboard access to content is
a part of "Ensure user access to all content."

On a related note, the definition of the User Agent UI explicitly
clumps the UA controls and the content together. Then guideline 7 says
in part "follow operating environment conventions." But operating
environment conventions, with the exception to some extent of
Java/Swing, only cover navigation thru and in standard UI toolkit
components and in text. But the sum of web page content navigation and
control is larger than the sum of what platform gidelines cover. Given
this hole and opportunity to expand the usefullness of the UAAG, the
recommendation here is that the UAAG committee produce a reference or
suggestion document for keysequences for navigating content from the
keyboard. Developers who follow what is in this suggested document
should be able to feel that by following it they have accounted for all
the content navigation oriented stated or suggested in the UAAG and
WCAG in their UA design criteria.
	This recommendation applies to UAs targeted at desktops and
	other systems powered by standard keyboards such as QWERTY
	keyboards not to the broad range of devices UAs are found
	today.


Guideline 6
It is not clear where scripts fall in this guideline or what to do with
scripts embeded in HTML content. If it causes the display of standard
HTML elements in the same way as HTML/XML, what is it considered -
another markup language or something that should use platform APIs? How
about if the script is on a server but it causes things to happen to
the content - is it another markup language or something that should
use platform APIs? The recommendation here is the UAAG provide a
discussion of answers to the above and other relevant script related
questions off this guideline somewhere.

We recommend the definition of applet be added to this document and
that it be refered to somewhere in guideline #6 (somewhere in 6.4-6.7
or in the general discussion on he guideline).


Guideline 8
The bullet points under "While developers should implement the
accessibility features of any specification, this document recommends
conformance to W3C specifications in particular for several reasons:"
in guideline #8's general discussion suggest what is meant here is "We
recommend you use W3C technologies covered by W3C guidelines in UAs as
opposed to using platform specific technology whenever possible for the
following reasons:" What is there now currently suggests what is being
said is "make sure your UA at least conforms with all W3C specs
because:" What is really meant by the statement "While developers
should implement the accessibility features of any specification, this
document recommends conformance to W3C specifications in particular for
several reasons:"?


Guideline 10
Is this guideline covering both the visual and programmatic aspects of
orienting the user? Right now it seems to focus on the visual aspects
of orientation. We recommend clarification on this point be placed in
the general description for this guideline.


Guideline 12
We recomend specifically saying that the online help documentation
provided with the UA must include discussion of all user agent features
that benefit accessibility. It is typically where people start when
they need to find out more about the workings of a product.

Received on Monday, 14 May 2001 13:07:29 UTC