Part of Item:
Comment Type: TE
Comment (including rationale for proposed change):
1.3.2 (color alone) is not sufficiently disambiguated from 1.3.4 (variations in presentations in text). Two of four examples, and only Common Failure, in UNDERSTANDING should be associated with 1.3.4. The implication is that 1.3.4 should be Level 1.
Proposed Change:
Promote 1.3.4 to Level 1. It may then be possible to demote 1.3.2 to Level 2 or 3.
I am also commenting on UNDERSTANDING and TECHNIQUES but with the assumption that 1.3.2 and 1.3.4 are correct as-is.
SC 1.3.4 has been folded into SC 1.3.1, in order to clarify that text variations are one of many types of design that must be semantically identified. SC 1.3.2 is thus more clearly specifically about the non-semantic aspect of the visual design specific to color.
SC 1.3.2 was previously a Level AA success criterion. The Working Group decided between January 17th and February 24th, 2006, to elevate it to Level A because of the desire to require a visual differentiator for color blind users. If SC 1.3.2 is moved to Level AA and SC 1.3.4 is moved to Level A, then all that would be required is for the color change to be programmatically determinable.
To clarify situation, we have created a new sufficient technique for SC 1.3.2 situation A: "Using semantic markup whenever color cues are used" (and reference H49).