Part of Item:
Comment Type: substantive
Comment (including rationale for proposed change):
The definition for assistive technology is difficult to understand because it gives the restrictive before the general meaning; also, it may be too restrictive, in describing legacy assistive technologies (for instance, some screen readers now are creating their own DOM separate from the mainstream browser).
Proposed Change:
EOWG recommends eliminating part (1) of the definition. (Note: We think that this would work *because* your definition of user agent is broad enough to already cover some of the functions of some assistive technologies.)
Response: http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-comments-wcag20/2007Jun/0405.html
We have changed the order of the items in the definition to make the restriction less confusing. We feel it is important to keep the restriction that assistive technology depends on a host user agent so that the success criteria require support for external assistive technology and can't just be satisfied by mechanisms that are internal to the user agent. However, we have added a note that host user agents may provide direct support for users with disabilities.