Michael Cooper
$Id: locate-a11y-advice.html,v 1.2 2011/04/06 14:05:44 cooper Exp $
The question has come up of where is the optimal location to store accessibility advice. The proximate concern is the fate of HTML5: Techniques for providing useful text alternatives. This document began as an alternative proposal to an over-prescriptive section of the HTML 5 specification but remains a deliverable of the HTML Working Group even though moved out of the specification proper, and is now in the process of obtaining consent to be published to the TR page as a First Public Working Draft. Of related interest is an effort by ISO JTC1 SC35 WG6 @@url to provide normative advice about text alternatives, which overlaps with WAI work but is not well coordinated with it. A consistent story about where such advice should be provide would be helpful in taking a position for coordination with that effort.
The central concern is whether accessibility advice should be specified in technical specifications, or left to external resources, ideally produced by the WAI. Some Working Groups prefer to have full control over their specification and not depend on external resources, while others are happy to defer accessibility advice to knowledgeable arenas. In all of this, the question of where the advice is best situated in order to maximize consistency and findability, and minimize duplication and contradiction, has been overlooked. Because the above work may establish precedent, we should examine this question before commiting to a final position on our approach to the above documents.
This is a proposal, initially prepared by Michael Cooper, for the approach we should take.
The basic principle I advocate is:
Technology specific advice relates to implementation of accessibility features that are specific to the provisions of the technology. Some examples include:
Guidance about implementing accessibility features that are not specific to the features of technology should exist in central resources, because these are common to multiple technologies. This allows specifications to eliminate unneccessary content and ensures that different technologies do not offer conflicting advice for general approaches. Over time, this will allow a central, authoratitve, trusted resource to be the "go-to" place for general Web accessibility implementation advice. Some examples of the kind of advice in this category include:
The principles above, if accepted, clearly suggest that HTML5: Techniques for providing useful text alternatives should be moved outside the HTML WG and become a central WAI recommendation.
No single resource serves as a central repository for all kinds of accessibility information that would fall into the "implementation guidance" category above. Some resources that might become that source, or be merged into that source, or merely inform the development of that source, are listed below.