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Draft Reformulation of Web Content Accessibility Guidelines

W3C Working Draft 23 August 2000

This version:
http://www.w3.org/WAI/GL/WCAG20/WD-WCAG20-20000823
Latest version:
http://www.w3.org/WAI/GL/WCAG20
Preview version:
http://www.w3.org/WAI/GL/WCAG20/WD-WCAG20-20000815
Editors:
Jason White, University of Melbourne
Wendy Chisholm, W3C
Gregg Vanderheiden, Trace R&D Center

Status

This document is prepared by the W3C Web Content Accessibility Guidelines Working Group (WCAG WG) to show how more generalized (less HTML-specific) WCAG checkpoints might read. This draft is not based on consensus of the working group nor has it gone through W3C process thus it in no way supersedes the checkpoints in WCAG 1.0. This draft derived from the following materials:

Based on feedback about the application of WCAG 1.0 to emerging XML applications and other Web trends the WCAG WG wants to investigate how more generalized checkpoints might read. Therefore, this draft has been produced.

This is a draft document and may be updated, replaced, or obsoleted by other documents at any time. It is inappropriate to use W3C Working Drafts as reference material or to cite them as other than "work in progress". A list of current W3C Recommendations and other technical documents can be found at http://www.w3.org/TR/.

Please send comments on this document to w3c-wai-gl@w3.org. The archives for this list are publicly available.


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Introduction

The following new terminology is proposed in this draft:

1: Principles
Principles are the most fundamental strategies for ensuring that content is accessible for individuals with a variety of constraints. They correspond to what are called "Guidelines" in WCAG 1.0.
2: Guidelines
Guidelines are more detailed than Principles. However, Guidelines do not provide technology-specific guidance (see the definition for Checkpoints). Some Guidelines may apply only to a certain range of technologies, such as Guideline XX which only applies to YY. Guidelines in this document may sometimes correspond to Checkpoints in WCAG1.0 as some of those checkpoints are not technology-specific.
3: Checkpoints [not shown in this draft]
Checkpoints are strategies for making accessible Web content using a specific technology or combination of technologies. The lists of Checkpoints are not an exhaustive lists of all possible accessible strategies for all technologies and combinations of technologies. Therefore, to conform to WCAG 2.0 the Guidelines must be met, but they are met by implementing the technology-specific Checkpoints. Checkpoints in this document may sometimes correspond to Checkpoints in WCAG 1.0 as some of those checkpoints are technology-specific.

Principles and Guidelines

Principle 1: All information must be available entirely through visual, auditory, or tactile methods or in any combination required by the user.

Users must be able to access information entirely through sight, entirely through sound, entirely through touch, or any combination thereof.

Provide access to information through each of the senses alone or any combination required by the user.

Guidelines

Principle 2: Capture structure and implied meaning (semantics) in markup or in a data model.

User agents and/or assistive technologies must have access to the structure of information as well as implied information. Content and structure must be available separately from the presentation. Oftentimes, presentation carries additional information that needs to be expressed explicitly in the data in some way.

Guidelines

Principle 3: Design for ease of comprehension, browsing and navigation

Guidelines

Principle 4: Design user interfaces for device independence

Guidelines

These need to be reworked to take account of the separation between user interface logic and presentation which is provided by X-Forms. [Do they??]

Principle 5: Compensate for older technologies and missing or incompletely implemented features of user agents

Guidelines

Any other interim measures which are considered to be of vital importance may be included here.

Glossary

@@need definitions

Content
Equivalent
Markup
Presentation
Semantics

$Date: 2000/11/08 08:27:40 $