Comments on: What to do with WCAG 2?

By: börsenspiel

börsenspiel — Mon, 07 May 2007 22:09:02 +0000

Note that the current plan is for technology-specific guidance to be provided in “Applications Notes” (that cover the basics) and Techniques documents (for more advanced folks). These will not be standards; instead, they will probably be official W3C “Notes” that are advisory.

By: Cecil Ward

Cecil Ward — Tue, 03 Apr 2007 10:36:42 +0000

I feel that, despite its many serious defects, WCAG2 has a role to play. I suggest that it be re-targetted, if that's the right word, to become a schema or meta-standard, rather than a concrete instance of an actual accessibility standard. What I mean by this is that it should become a statement of abstract guiding principles to be used when defining actual concrete standards as they relate to a particular technology. A 'how to write a standard' document. So that if, say, a WCAG 1.1 or 1.2 or whatever for (X)HTML is produced, then that concrete standard should be built to conform to WCAG2. A statement of guiding principles is valuable in itself, and its abstract nature would not then be something to be criticised. Concrete standards should then be available to give concise practical guidance, while the philosophy behind their development would not have to be on show up front.

By: Web Directions North post mortem ¬ Easy Reader

Web Directions North post mortem ¬ Easy Reader — Mon, 19 Feb 2007 23:23:33 +0000

[...] The fireside chat went really well. Joe is just a fun guy to listen to, whether he’s presenting or not. Joe talked at length about designing for accessibility, using the TTC as a case study. He showed how accessibility concerns should be pervasive throughout an organization, in every public touchpoint. He also called for the destruction of WCAG2, but that’s another can of worms entirely. [...]

By: Roman Novak

Roman Novak — Sun, 18 Feb 2007 01:00:07 +0000

Lets see some “human” look: WCAG 2.0 could be some rules as the grammar are the rules in a language. We need the rules – grammar to understand each other. We need strict rules to use it in the language at TV, newspapers etc. But we don’t need strict rules in a pub between friends, having fun. It can be similar in a web. For formal sites we need rules (WCAG 2.0), but for nobody can order use it strictly everywhere (likewise it would not be possible).

By: Pat

Pat — Fri, 16 Feb 2007 08:04:27 +0000

WCAG 2.0 is getting to be a bit of a joke, same as XHTML 2.0 come to think of it.

I was interested to hear to latest on HTML 5 recently and you have to wonder how the W3C will retain any credibility if people walk away and start creating their own ‘standards’.

But maybe this is the only way forward; community generated standards. I mean this is how most things we take for granted–in terms of web technology–originally came about anyway, isn’t it?

By: Shawn Henry

Shawn Henry — Thu, 15 Feb 2007 21:34:59 +0000

I know that the concept of baseline is new, but I also know that I’ve never yet seen a definition of it.

Hi, ppk, Baseline was defined in previous documents. Some are still available and some have been replaced. Baseline was included in the WCAG 2.0 Working Draft 17 April 2006, especially the Conformance section at http://www.w3.org/TR/2006/WD-WCAG20-20060427/conformance.html. There was a brief intro to baseline in past versions of the Overview of WCAG 2.0 Documents at http://www.w3.org/WAI/intro/wcag20, for example: "A new concept in WCAG 2.0 is technology baseline. A baseline is a list of Web technologies (HTML, CSS, etc.). The baseline defines the technologies that most user agents (browsers, assistive technologies, etc.) support in a way that meets the needs of people with disabilities. One way to think about baselines is: The technologies that you can rely on in creating your Web site because there is ample accessibility support for them." The WCAG WG received lots of public comments on baseline, and the comments have been very helpful in refining how baselines is used in WCAG 2.0. To help communicate that the WCAG Working Group agrees with many of the comments and that the Working Group is making changes based on the feedback, we updated the Overview document for now to say that the concept of baseline is being refined.

By: Jordan Clark

Jordan Clark — Wed, 14 Feb 2007 19:01:33 +0000

The problem with these guidelines, in my opinion, is that they are way too verbose. I realise that it is a technical standard and needs to be properly defined, but as Joe Clark pointed out in his article To
Hell with WCAG2, 28,000 word is just ridiculous!
My main concern is that if senior members of the web standards community have a hard time making head or tail of it, “old-school” designers are going to be even more disaffected and carry on with bad practices.

By: Tuna

Tuna — Tue, 13 Feb 2007 02:32:32 +0000

I wouldn’t junk the WCAG 2, but then I do consider it the classic academic document that is frankly of no major practical use.

The fact that clarifications have to be issued by the W3C in the first place is a very bad sign that the workgroups for whatever reason have missed the core reasoning for the WCAG. Its meant to be a Guideline… presently its guiding nothing.

I do find that WCAG 2 is presently doing more damage as it is. As it is being held up by enterprises and govt agencies as the new light to follow, and like it or not they are taking the bare minimum that needs to be done to comply. Which is most cases is a lot less than the previous WAG.

Maybe the problem is the personalities in the working group, not the document for the inaction. It only takes one strong personality in this type of group to derail a process.

What to do,
1) you can patch it, issue example clarifications and make damn sure they cover all bases.
2) revise it, looking at the core of what it should be doing. Maybe under a new working group.
3) scrap it, start again, under a new working group
4) forget about it the W3G is dead, its just doesn’t know it.

To stop the fall out of 2 + 3 I feel (1) is what’s going to happen. Question is when!

By: ppk

ppk — Sun, 11 Feb 2007 13:08:57 +0000

Shawn,

I know that the concept of baseline is new, but I also know that I’ve never yet seen a definition of it. I read that W3C is ‘working on it’; as far as I know they’ve been doing this for at least the past year and a half.

What’s the point of pointing to a concept that hasn’t been defined yet and is totally unclear (maybe even to the Working Group?) It’s definitely not an argument in favour of WCAG 2.0 , and it doesn’t clarify anything.

Please enlighten me.

By: pauldwaite

pauldwaite — Sat, 10 Feb 2007 15:47:02 +0000

Imagine a validator that could test all accessibility points. No one would need to read the document

Principle 1 in WCAG 2.0 is that content should be perceivable. Guideline 1.1 is “provide text alternatives for all non-text content”.

If we imagine an image, a validator can check that there is some alternative content there (i.e. there is an alt attribute with some text), but it can’t check that the alternative content adequately describes the image, because it doesn’t know what the image is.

If the text doesn’t adequately describe the image, the site isn’t accessible.

Some accessibility advocates would probably rail against the lazy programmer technique of validating then fixing.

No. Accessibility advocates would explain patiently to programmers that computers alone can’t solve everything, you need humans as well.