Notes on WCAG 2.0 Core Techniques

We (Jenae and Wendy) went through the existing Core Techniques for WCAG 1.0 to figure out where the pieces will fit in the WCAG 2.0 model. Here are our notes.

Text Equivalents

• Excerpts from the National Braille Association Tape Recording Manual, Third Edition
• Guidance about null alt-text for decorative images (such as spacers).
• IBM Images and Animations

Do away with some sections?

e.g.

• Content negotiation - handled by server-side techniques?
• Structure vs. Presentation - handled in intro to checkpoint or in each technology-specific document.
• If it only provides an overview, get rid of it. e.g. a lot of section 3. It it actually provides techniques (e.g. text equivalents) then keep it. Some of the discussion is now covered by Benefits sections within each of the checkpoints.
• conclusion that we seem to be drawing is that only have a gateway document (like Techniques for WCAG 1.0 or along the lines of the checklist developed at the Linz F2F) and if want to provide an overview provide it there for each checkpoint rather than in a Core Techniques.
• Automatic page refresh - technology-specific
• Bundled documents - handle in intro/gateway document. even in 2.0 anymore?
• Validation section becomes a technology-specific guide to determining conformance? Perhaps something along the lines of 3 Assessing accessibility of CSS with HTML in the CSS Techniques rough draft.

Alternative pages

• now relates to checkpoint 5.4 in WCAG 2.0
• Is HTML the default for backup accessibility. i.e. if someone using SVG and wanted to provide an accessible alternative would it be an HTML page? especially, what if it were an SVG application (SVG animation, scripting...) would they provide a static HTML page? Or depdn on user request (i.e. Device Independence stuff...)

Questions about 2.0 success criteria

• checkpoint 3.1, how does this apply to SVG?
  • the following minimum structure elements are present. titles on major sections of long documents paragraphs

• checkpoint 3.3 - how apply this to web applications?

Comprehension

section 5 of Core Techniques: Comprehension

What about separate document for this? e.g. "Techniques for Comprehension" or "Techniques for making your document easier to understand?"

Browser support

The section in Core is fairly worthless. It will be replaced by techniques for Checkpoint 5.2 Design for backward compatibility. Determining baseline capabilities could exist on its own and seems not technology-specific. Refer to resources like the WebReview CSS compatibility charts.

12 Technologies Reviewed for Accessibility

This section replaced by references to XAG for XML vocabularies. What about other technologies?

13 Audio and Video and 15 Visual information and motion and 16 Collated text transcripts

yikes, how did that section end up empty?? probably a mislabeling of the headers...

this section will mostly be in the SMIL techniques, right? Perhaps also in SVG techniques (related to animation)?

Move to technology-specifics with lots of references off to other sites, e.g. NCAM.

$Date: 2002/07/26 23:29:14 $ Wendy Chisholm and Jenae Andershonis