This material would go in the introduction. It would not be normative material, and should be easy to read. The major audience for this new proposal for Definition of Levels section will be developers and policy makers. It is valuable to have a clear explanation of how the levels were developed when persuading policy makers to adopt the guidelines or to set a recommended adoption level as part of their policy.

Proposed

UAAG conformance levels (A, AA, AAA) provide a path for user agent developers to improve their product over time and to prioritize new features to develop. UAAG conformance levels attempt to balance the needs of people with disabilities with the difficulty the user agent developer could experience in meeting that need. There are many different types of disabilities and different types of user agents, so the UAAG level assigned to a success criterion may not precisely match the definition of the level in all circumstances.

Level A success criteria represent needs where different groups of people with disabilities are blocked from receiving information or accomplishing a task AND that the solutions to those needs are relatively minor for developers to solve or the solutions are common in the marketplace. In some cases, extensions or addons to popular browsers provide solutions.

Level AA represents needs where people with disabilities have difficulty accessing information or accomplishing a task (including tasks causing excessive fatigue), and where the solutions may be more difficult to implement or requires developing a new subsystem for the product.

Level AAA represents needs where the solution improves accessibility for specific groups or reduces fatigue to accomplish tasks, but the solution is challenging to solve, requiring a major effort or development of intelligent algorithms.

Summary

Details