Proposals and Submissions from Gregg Vanderheiden to WCAG Working Group (and WAI in General?)
Regarding Guidelines, Web Accessibility Conformance Schemes, etc.

Gregg Vanderheiden 3/28/2003

Intro

One of the major topics scheduled for discussion at our last WCAG face to face was a series of what we called "Big Elephants". These were big issues that had come up that were blocking our ability to move forward. A list of these can be found in the agenda and materials leading up to the meeting, but they included such things as:

• How to handle the fact that some of our guidelines just require content to be marked up, while other guidelines prescribe or restrict the way in which authors would create content or present content.
• How to allow people to scope their conformance without opening it up to unacceptable scoping (like saying a shopping site is 98% accessible if you can’t use the checkout pages).
• Relationship to user agents and “baseline” user agents
• Definitions
• Web Applications
• Overlap of Navigation with Operation and Understanding
• Overlap of Understanding items.

In trying to address these issues, I had engaged in a number of conversations regarding some different ideas and approaches. These included discussion with people at CSUN.

On the first day of the face to face, I presented some materials, most of which I had pulled together Friday afternoon and evening to try to address some of these issues. The primary goal was to explore these ideas with the group to see if they addressed some of the issues and to further develop them.

Listed below, under "Take One" is the first version of these thoughts and documents. Based on the discussions at the meeting, the ideas have been further refined and additional questions and issues raised. I will be following up with a write up on these as soon as possible. In the meantime, the original documents are posted here for reference.

Take 1 - As Presented to WCAG F2F March 23

PLEASE NOTE THAT THESE ARE THE PRELIMINARY DOCUMENTS. THINKING ON THESE HAS EVOLVED SINCE THE MEETING AND I WILL BE RE-POSTING UPDATED MATERIALS SOON. HOWEVER, FEEL FREE TO SEND COMMENTS TO THE GL LIST (OR TO GV@TRACE.WISC.EDU IF THAT IS MORE COMFORTABLE -- AND I WILL INCLUDE THEM IN SUMMARY COMMENTS).

• Proposal for a completely different Model for Web Content Accessibility (March 23, 2003)
• FAQ's (March 23, 2003)
• Quick Take 1 of Rewriting Guidelines according to new approach (March 23, 2003)
• Content Requirements of RT compatible SAS servers as of March 22, 2003 (March 23, 2003)

Note, in the model, content providers need to provide their content in a form which the transcoding servers can handle. "What the transcoding severs can handle" will be a continually evolving set of requirements as discussed previously. Each year, the servers will be better and better at interpreting new formats. As result, each year, authors will have more ability to use more formats. The "requirements of RT compatible SAS servers" is a listing of the formats which the network of transcoding servers can handle at any point in time. The description in number 4, therefore, would be a rough draft of what the requirements a content author might have to face at any point in time might look like.

Take 2 - Additional Thoughts

• Transcoding Server Functions (March 28, 2003)
• Conformance Proposal Based on Profiling (March 28, 2003)