Appendix B Documenting Accessibility Support for [begin add]Uses of [end add]a Web Technology

The documentation of accessibility support for [begin add]uses of [end add]a Web technology provides the information needed to determine whether it is possible to satisfy the WCAG 2.0 Success Criteria for a particular environment.

Accessibility Support documentation for [begin add]uses of [end add]a Web technology includes the following information:

• The version or versions of the technology

• For each user agent or plug-in that supports this version of the technology:

  • The version of the user agent or plug-in, including the operating system or platform

  • [begin add]Ways of using the[end add][begin delete]The features of the[end delete] technology [begin add]that are [end add]supported by the user agent; ideally, [begin add]there are ways to meet all of the success criteria[end add][begin delete]this is all features[end delete], but exceptions should be noted.

  • Known limitations of the user agent support for [begin add]uses of the [end add]technology [begin add]to meet Success Criteria[end add][begin delete]features[end delete]

• For each assistive technology that supports the Web technology:

  • The version of the assistive technology, including the operating system or platform

• For each host user agent that is supported by this version of the assistive technology:

  • [begin add]Ways of using[end add][begin delete]The features of[end delete] the technology supported by the assistive technology for this user agent

  • Known limitations in the support of uses of the technology to meet success criteria when using [begin delete]features by [end delete]the assistive technology with this user agent

Target environments are defined by the user agents and assistive technologies available to its users. Documentation of accessibility support involves detailed understanding of the [begin add]ways to use [end add]functionality of a technology [begin add] to meet success criteria[end add], and also of user agents and assistive technology. Because of this, vendors and developers of Web technologies and user agents are encouraged to provide this information about the accessibility support of their products. Similarly, developers and vendors of assistive technology are encouraged to provide this information about the [begin add]ways to use[end add] Web technologies [begin add] that are [end add]supported by their products. Authors should [begin add]need to document[end add][begin delete]undertake documenting[end delete] the accessibility support[begin add]ed ways to use[end add] [begin delete]of [end delete]a technology only when there is not reliable documentation available from vendors or testing groups [begin add]for those uses[end add].

For a controlled environment, such as a corporate workplace, the user agents and assistive technologies available may be a specific set of versions of user agents on a specific set of platforms. To determine whether [begin add]uses of [end add]a Web technology are accessibility supported in a target environment, an author checks that the user agents and assistive technologies available are in the set of supported user agents and assistive technologies listed [begin add]for those uses [end add]in the Accessibility Support documentation.

For a target environment like the Internet, authors may need to consider a much larger set of user agents, including older versions, and on a wider variety of platforms.

Environments that use different natural languages are different target environments. For example, the accessibility-supported [begin add]ways of using[end add] technologies for an English language environment may differ from those for an Arabic language environment, since there may be different user agents and assistive technologies that support these languages.

The documentation includes version-specific information about all the assistive technologies and all the user agents and the ways that they interact with one another. If support in these user agents is similar, it will be straightforward for an author to decide if [begin add]a documented way of using a[end add] technology is accessibility supported. If the [begin add]uses[end add][begin delete]features[end delete] supported are different in different versions, authors can only rely on the [begin add]uses[end add][begin delete]features[end delete] that are supported in the versions available to their users in determining accessibility support.