Edit comment LC-1250 for Accessibility Guidelines Working Group

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Comment LC-1250: Comment Shortname:; Commenter: Henny Swan <henny.swan@rnib.org.uk> on behalf of Royal National Institute of the Blind; 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:
Comment: It feels as if this is a get out clause for a site owner to make all but the most complex area of a site accessible. For example a supermarket can make everything but the online shopping accessible and stop there. It potentially allows to the site owner to get complacent once all but the most complex parts of the site have been made accessible. You can argue that laws enforcing accessibility in a country will bridge this gap of possible apathy but not all countries a) have laws, b) have the will to enforce them. Take for example China in 2008. They could build a site using technologies amount to allowing content based on Ajax i.e. to update timetables etc and leave those sections out of the conformance claims. A basic baseline has to be recommended in WCAG 2, it can't be left to legal, market and other forces from country to country. It can't claim to be a standard if there is not a minimum foundation.

Proposed Change:

This needs to be more water tight. If that section CAN be made accessible (i.e. the techniques exist to make it accessible) then it must be. If it is problematic to make accessible then a clear indication that it is being worked on placed in the conformance claim.; Related issues: (space separated ids); WG Notes: [TEAMA] [AL]Propose to partial not-accept upon available of better baseline documentation. If only part of the web content meets WCAG, conformance statement must make that distinction. No change is needed from current conformance language except to make it more obvious to readers. As to the proposal that content must be made accessible if it CAN be done, it is not part of WCAG or W3C to enforce compliance. Discussed in the 12 April 2007 telecon: Resolution: accepted unanimous 1250, 1032, 1031, 1129, 528, 958, 818 http://www.w3.org/WAI/GL/2007/04/12-wai-wcag-minutes.html {not-accept}; Resolution: This comment seems to be confusing the question of baseline (that is, what technologies can be used to satisfy the success criteria) and the scope of a conformance claim (that is, which Web pages does it cover.) WCAG conformance claims are descriptive, that is, they state which Web pages conform. To address issues such as supermarkets making everything but the on-line shopping accessible, WCAG does require that conformance claims cover complete processes: "If a Web page that is part of a process does not conform at some level, then no conformance claim is made at that level for any Web pages in that process.". However, in general, whether an entire web site conforms is a policy issue. Once we move beyond individual Web pages, it is difficult to define the boundaries of what must or must not conform.; (Please make sure the resolution is adapted for public consumption)