Edit comment LC-2670 for Accessibility Guidelines Working Group

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Comment LC-2670: Comment Shortname:; Commenter: Duff Johnson <djohnson@commonlook.com>; Message-id:; Section of the document concerned:

or; Refinement of the section concerned:; Status:
assigned to; Type:; Comment:
NO APPLICATION IN CLOSED SYSTEMS

Programmatic determinability is (rightly) a key concept in WCAG 2.0. The notion rests entirely on the assumption that the operating context is content “out there” and that a user’s browser processes such content as accessed over HTTP. Fair enough – this is all part of the web content definition and other terms of art employed by WCAG 2.0.

It’s obvious, however, that this paradigm is entirely inapplicable to closed systems such as kiosks, phones, equipment control interfaces and the like. As such, I have no idea how WCAG 2.0 is to be applied even notionally to such systems – yet the WCAG2ICT advises me to “apply WCAG 2.0 directly as written”!

Since closed systems represent a high volume of use cases for non-web ICT, the WCAG2ICT’s assertions in this regard (un-argued as they are) may be dismissed.; Related issues: LC-2663
(space separated ids); WG Notes:; Proposed Resolution: We agree that many of the WCAG provisions are based upon information being programmatically determinable and that this would not be of any benefit to closed functionality or closed products. We have created a specific section in the introduction that discusses closed functionality and how to handle them since "programmatic determinability" won't work if assistive technologies cannot be used . It is included below: <insert paragraph on closed functionality> @@@@ from the Closed Functionality section of https://sites.google.com/site/wcag2ict/home/introduction-to-wcag2ict-application-note; (Please make sure the resolution is adapted for public consumption)