What to do about web-based user agents

Hi all,

One of the concerns that Jeanne and I heard expressed at TPAC was that the concept of web-based user agents is concerning in some quarters. In particular, there is a feeling that what is rendered in the content window of the base user agent is just "Content" and only WCAG 2.0 should apply rather than WCAG PLUS UAAG's 100+ additional SCs. And unfortunately I think this concern might be a barrier to UAAG moving forward.

On Wednesday after the F2F, Jeanne and I ran through the reference document (http://w3c.github.io/UAAG/UAAG20-Reference/) and added "Typically Implemented in:" tags to each in an attempt to wrap our heads around the degree to which web-based user agents are being asked to implement features themselves vs. just passing through features of the base browsers. The result seems to show that most features would indeed be just passed through.

Therefore, I wonder if non-web-based browsers could be addressed in a special section that tried to more clearly explain what is and isn't a web-based user agent and which SCs might apply.

If people agree with the basic idea, I can start on a proposal...

Cheers,
Jan


(MR) JAN RICHARDS
PROJECT MANAGER
INCLUSIVE DESIGN RESEARCH CENTRE (IDRC)
OCAD UNIVERSITY

T 416 977 6000 x3957
F 416 977 9844
E jrichards@ocadu.ca

Received on Thursday, 6 November 2014 18:01:00 UTC