- From: Wayne Dick <wayneedick@gmail.com>
- Date: Mon, 2 May 2011 15:30:14 -0700
- To: wai-eo-editors@w3.org
To Everyone: I'm writing out this because WCAG 2.0 as interpreted by WCAG WG excludes the overwhelming majority of people with visual impairments from accessibility support. To protect the blind minority and leave out majority people with uncorrectable partial sight is just too huge of an oversight to wait 10 years for a revise of WCAG. WCAG cannot leave out the majority of people with visual disabilities and call itself a legitimate standard. I have been noticing that web pages are getting much worse for people with low vision. I think it is because W3C has been so remiss on establishing any reasonable interpretation for accessibility support. The only support mention in normative sections of WCAG 2.0 regarding low vision are: 1.1.1 - A reference to large print in a comment 1.4.3 - Contrast (minimum) -- This actually makes reading harder for many people with low vision. 1.4.4 Resize Text - Kind of silly since most people who are classified as disabled need about 300% enlargement or more. 1.4.6 establishes an even more painful contrast threshold for many people with central retina damage. 1.4.8 kindly mercifully the damage of 1.4.3 and 1.4.6, but they are level AAA making them irrelevant from any enforcement standpoint. The final normative reference is in the Glossary definition of assistive technology. The examples of assistive technology for low vision are: "screen magnifiers, and other visual reading assistants, which are used by people with visual, perceptual and physical print disabilities to change text font, size, spacing, color, synchronization with speech, etc. in order to improve the visual readability of rendered text and images." At the time WCAG 2.0 was adopted three types of assistive technology support were recognized in a normative section: Screen magnification; style control over (text font, size, spacing and color), and synchronization of text with speech. The idea that zoom represents the extent of accessibility support needed for low vision is just denial of reality. You don't need accessible content to use zoom. Zoom works on images as well as accessible text. The most reasonable bottom line is the level of support identified in the normative sections of WCAG 2.0 including the Glossary. I know that: font type, size, spacing and color were included because, I put them there so people with low vision would be protected. We actually don't need a rewrite of WCAG 2.0, we just need to follow all the normative sections. Believe me, the situation is getting worse for low vision. I thing WCAG WG encouraged it by making foolish exceptions. Wayne Dick
Received on Monday, 2 May 2011 22:30:43 UTC