Edit comment LC-1148 for Accessibility Guidelines Working Group

Quick access to

Previous: LC-533 Next: LC-1213

Comment LC-1148: Comment Shortname:; Commenter: Greg Lowney <gcl-0039@access-research.org> on behalf of Lowney Access Research, LLC; Message-id:; Section of the document concerned:

or; Refinement of the section concerned:; Status:
assigned to; Type:; Resolution status:
Response drafted Resolution implemented Reply sent to commenter; Response status:
No response from Commenter yet Commenter approved disposition Commenter objected to disposition
Commenter's response (URI):; Comment:
"The Conformance section and SC 4.2 clearly contradict each other. The section on Conformance currently reads ""WCAG 2.0 conformance at level A means that all Level 1 success criteria in the guidelines are met assuming user agent support for only the technologies in the specified baseline."" By contrast, 4.2.1 and 4.2.3 say ""At least one version of the content meets all level N success criteria, but alternative version(s) that do not meet all level N success criteria may be available from the same URI.""

Take for example a URI that has two versions of the same content, one not meeting SC 1.1.1 and the other an accessible alternative that does meet 1.1.1. Can that URI conform at Single-A? Under the current wording of the Conformance section, the answer is clearly NO! That page complies with 4.2.1 (by providing an accessible alternative), but it still fails 1.1.1: the rules stated in the Conformance section provide no exemption from 1.1.1 just because something passes 4.2.1, nor does 1.1.1 itself define any such exemption.

If conforming with 4.2.1 is meant to provide exemptions from most other Level 1 criteria, the document MUST say that in the normative Conformance section or in the description of each success criterion.

You might say that the intent is understood, but the question is, is the intent supported or contradicted by the actual wording of the normative sections of the document?"

Proposed Change:

"Change Conformance to explicitly say that conformance requires that each URI conforms with all SC of the appropriate level OR that an accessible alternative that does so is available from the same URI (with a link to the details of what that means, currently in the Understanding document's discussion of Guideline 4.2).

OR, change the section ""Conformance Levels and the Baseline"" to say that only conformance with criterion 4.2.1 is required to claim Single-A conformance, and leave it to 4.2.1 to require all the rest of the Level 1 criteria."; Related issues: (space separated ids); WG Notes: [TEAMA] [AL] Commenter is correct. There is a minor logical breakdown. Indeed, a web page containing multiple versions of the same content would have difficulty making a conformance claim unless all versions meet all of the corresponding sc at the level. But there would be no point of having 4.2.1 and 4.2.3 as success criteria if that is a requirement. In most cases, you should be able to use baseline to untie the knot. But there is a possible scenario where one or more versions of the content would meet all sc while others may not, while the same technologies are used in all versions. I know it sounds silly, but it can happen. Think of two multimedia presentation-one with caption and one without, being posted on the same page. Conformance rule would not allow the author to rule out the non-caption multimedia. The cleanest mean to address this somewhat unlikely scenario is to move 4.2.1 and 4.2.3 into the conformance area instead of being sc on their own. Not sure if this counts as a major revision. I think it would be okay to move without 2nd last call. Discussed in the 05 April 2007 telecon: resolution: accept LC-1148 as amended http://www.w3.org/WAI/GL/2007/04/05-wai-wcag-minutes.html {accept} DONE Change wording of conformance requirement 1 to: "For each Web page in the conformance claim, all of the success criteria for the level claimed are met or the Web page satisfies conformance criterion 4." Internal WD updated 06 April 2007 Response: http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-comments-wcag20/2007Jun/0300.html; Resolution: We have moved the requirements of success criterion 4.2.1 out of the guidelines and into the conformance section, and we have changed the definition of the conformance levels to require that each web page either satisfy all success criteria at that level or satisfy the alternate version requirement.; (Please make sure the resolution is adapted for public consumption)