Edit comment LC-1029 for Accessibility Guidelines Working Group

Quick access to

Previous: LC-953 Next: LC-966

Comment LC-1029: Comment Shortname:; Commenter: Gian Sampson-Wild <gian@tkh.com.au>; Message-id:; Section of the document concerned:

or; Refinement of the section concerned:; Status:
assigned to; Type:; Resolution status:
Response drafted Resolution implemented Reply sent to commenter; Response status:
No response from Commenter yet Commenter approved disposition Commenter objected to disposition
Commenter's response (URI):; Comment:
Baseline - From reading the Baseline documents, it appears that if a baseline technology does not have particular functionality (for example, the ability to navigate using only the keyboard), then the site can still be compliant with WCAG2 (but obviously not accessible). This acts as a disincentive for big corporations to develop accessibility features. Developers want things to be easy - it's a lot easier to click "Print to PDF" in a Word document than it is to tag a PDF. So what is to stop Adobe (sorry Loretta!) superceding their PDF technology with a new "SDF" technology that has no accessibility features? In that case it would be a lot easier for a person to create a WCAG2 compliant SDF document than it would be to create a WCAG2 compliant PDF document. In another example, if someone had CSS in their baseline then it would be WCAG2 compliant to use CSS markup to highlight a specific word without having an HTML alternative, and which would not be able to be interpreted by a screen reader

Proposed Change:

Remove the baseline theory, or allow only UAAG compliant programs in baseline. If I have misinterpreted the baseline theory, then the WG needs to develop a document to be used in conjunction with WCAG2 that lists what baseline technologies must be able to do (similar to UAAG); Related issues: LC-1028
(space separated ids); WG Notes: [TEAMA] BASICALLY THE SAME AS 1029 BUT 1028 IS SHORTER COMMENT. Reopened 26 April. Refer to http://www.w3.org/2002/09/wbs/35422/200604260-misc/results#x1029 Discussed in the 03 May 2007 telecon: Accepted by unanimous consent http://www.w3.org/WAI/GL/2007/05/03-wai-wcag-minutes.html Response: http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-comments-wcag20/2007Jun/0165.html; Resolution: The conformance section has been completely rewritten, and the term "baseline" has been replaced by "accessibility-supported Web technologies". If a technology doesn't have AT support then you can't use that technology to meet WCAG according to our conformance requirements. So the problem you cite would be covered. Determining whether a technology is accessible-supported is based on the availability and support for that technology in users' user agent and AT. The purpose is to ensure that content can be accessed with the user's AT. NOTE: The technologies referred to are not user agent technologies. They are the technologies used to build the page (like HTML, CSS etc.); (Please make sure the resolution is adapted for public consumption)