Edit comment LC-1303 for Accessibility Guidelines Working Group

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Comment LC-1303

Comment Shortname:

Commenter: Charles McCathieNevile <chaals@opera.com>

Message-id:

Section of the document concerned:

[Free text description]Document as a wholeIntroduction Related Documents Authoring tools The Role of User Agents The Four Principles of Accessibility Important New Terms Used in WCAG 2.0 Conformance Technology assumptions and the "baseline" Conformance levels and the baseline Conformance claims Content that conforms to WCAG 1.0 How to refer to WCAG 2.0 from other documents Guideline 1.1 Success Criterion 1.1.1 Guideline 1.2 Success Criterion 1.2.1 Success Criterion 1.2.2 Success Criterion 1.2.3 Success Criterion 1.2.4 Success Criterion 1.2.5 Success Criterion 1.2.6 Success Criterion 1.2.7 Guideline 1.3 Success Criterion 1.3.1 Success Criterion 1.3.2 Success Criterion 1.3.3 Success Criterion 1.3.4 Success Criterion 1.3.5 Guideline 1.4 Success Criterion 1.4.1 Success Criterion 1.4.2 Success Criterion 1.4.3 Success Criterion 1.4.4 Guideline 2.1 Success Criterion 2.1.1 Success Criterion 2.1.2 Guideline 2.2 Success Criterion 2.2.1 Success Criterion 2.2.2 Success Criterion 2.2.3 Success Criterion 2.2.4 Success Criterion 2.2.5 Success Criterion 2.2.6 Guideline 2.3 Success Criterion 2.3.1 Success Criterion 2.3.2 Guideline 2.4 Success Criterion 2.4.1 Success Criterion 2.4.2 Success Criterion 2.4.3 Success Criterion 2.4.4 Success Criterion 2.4.5 Success Criterion 2.4.6 Success Criterion 2.4.7 Success Criterion 2.4.8 Guideline 2.5 Success Criterion 2.5.1 Success Criterion 2.5.2 Success Criterion 2.5.3 Success Criterion 2.5.4 Guideline 3.1 Success Criterion 3.1.1 Success Criterion 3.1.2 Success Criterion 3.1.3 Success Criterion 3.1.4 Success Criterion 3.1.5 Success Criterion 3.1.6 Guideline 3.2 Success Criterion 3.2.1 Success Criterion 3.2.2 Success Criterion 3.2.3 Success Criterion 3.2.4 Success Criterion 3.2.5 Guideline 4.1 Success Criterion 4.1.1 Success Criterion 4.1.2 Guideline 4.2 Success Criterion 4.2.1 Success Criterion 4.2.2 Success Criterion 4.2.3 Success Criterion 4.2.4 Appendix A: Glossary Appendix B: Checklist Appendix C: Acknowledgements Appendix D: Comparison of WCAG 1.0 checkpoints to WCAG 2.0 Appendix E: References
or

Refinement of the section concerned:

Status:

open proposal pending resolved_yes resolved_no resolved_partial other assigned to Nobody Abma, Jake Abou-Zahra, Shadi Allan, Jim Auclair, Christopher Avila, Jonathan Babinszki, Tom Bailey, Bruce Bernard, Renaldo Bernier, Alex Blake, Matthew Boudreau, Denis Brewer, Judy Butler, Shari Campbell, Alastair Carlson, Laura Chakravarthula, Srinivasu Cirrincione, Pietro Conway, Vivienne Cooper, Michael Crutchfield, Elizabeth Deltour, Romain Dick, Wayne Ding, Chaohai Dirks, Kim Dixit, Shwetank Draffan, E.A. Duggin, Alistair Eggert, Eric Elledge, Michael Faulkner, Steve Ferraz, Reinaldo Fiers, Wilco Fischer, Detlev Foliot, John Garrish, Matt Garrison, Alistair Gower, Michael Guarino Reid, Loretta Hakkinen, Markku Haritos-Shea, Katie Henry, Shawn Hoffmann, Thomas Horton, Sarah Isager, Kasper Jensen, Tobias Christian Johansson, Stefan Johlic, Marc Johnson, Rick Jones, Crystal Joys Andersen, Wilhelm Kapoor, Shilpi Keim, Oliver Kirkpatrick, Andrew Kirkwood, John Kiss, Jason Kraft, Maureen Ku, JaEun Kurapati, Sujasree Lauke, Patrick Lauriat, Shawn Lee, Steve Lemon, Gez Li, Alex Li, Kepeng Li, Liangcheng Loiselle, Chris Lowney, Greg Lui, Edwina Lund, Adam Ma, Jia MacDonald, David Mace, Amanda Manser, Erich Martin, Debra McCormack, Scott McMeeking, Chris McSorley, Jan Milliken, Neil Montgomery, Rachael Mueller, Mary Jo nicole, windmann Niemann, Gundula Nurthen, James O Connor, Joshue Oh, Jeong-Hun Panchang, Sailesh Pandhi, Charu Pasi, Aparna Patch, Kimberly Philipp, Melanie Pluke, Mike Pouncey, Ian Repsher, Stephen Rochford, John Runyan, Marla Savva, Andreas Sawczyn, Steve Schnabel, Stefan Seeman-Kestenbaum, Lisa Sims, Glenda Singh, Avneesh Skotkjerra, Stein Erik Sloan, David Smith, Alan Smith, Jim Solomon, Adam Spellman, Jeanne F Strobbe, Christophe Suprock, Greg Swallow, David Thompson, Kenneth Thyme, Anne Ueki, Makoto Vaishnav, Jatin Vanderheiden, Gregg Venkata, Manoj Wahlbin, Kathleen Wang, Can WANG, WEI White, Jason Zelmanowicz, Erica Zerner, Adam Zhang, Mengni

Type: substantive editorial typo question general comment undefined

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:

Structural/substantive issue

The current levels system for success criteria seems insufficiently
described, and inappropriate to the needs of developers.

WCAG 20 acknowledges that most criteria are essential in order for some people to be able to use some types of web content. It then attempts to describe the amount of benefit to usersin general (the difference between level 1 and level 2) and the apparent applicability of a technique to the web. It appears that the goal is to provide a "reasonable" implementation planning tool.

Both of these things are in fact situation-dependent. In some cases, it will be easy, in others critical, to apply approaches whose level suggests that they are not so important or easy in the general case.

Thus, while providing a signed equivalent of content is extremely
important in a number of cases, and is occasionally trivially easy (in
others it is quite expensive), it is perfectly possible that all web
content claiming triple-A conformance is without signed content.

Similarly, there is no clear technical justification for different
requirement levels for captioning depending on whether content is
"live"/"real-time", or pre-recorded. The accesibility result for users who rely on captions is exactly the same in both cases. Again, this may be easy to implement in some cases, and is very expensive in others, and its relative importance will be variable.

In order to assist developers, and policy makers, WCAG should describe the imact on users of a particular success criterion being met or not. This enables prioritisation based on the actual situation, rather than a generalised model situation which will often be an inaccurate
representation of the case at hand.

I propose that either:
1. the levels be removed, and the information in the currently informative "Understanding WCAG" about who benefits be moved to the normtive recommendation. Or, as an alternative

2. the specification revert to the WCAG 1.0 priority scheme, rather than with the "apparent ease of implementation" clouding the question of their relevance to users.

cheers

Chaals

Related issues: (space separated ids)

WG Notes: [TEAMA] [confLevels] Discussed in the 08 February 2007 telecon: Accepted by unanimous consent. http://www.w3.org/WAI/GL/2007/02/08-wai-wcag-minutes.html {accept}

Resolution: The description of conformance levels in WCAG 2 has been rewritten to clarify the differences (see http://www.w3.org/TR/2007/WD-WCAG20-20070517/#overview-levels ): The word "levels" does not mean that some success criteria are more important than others. Each success criterion in WCAG 2.0 is essential to some users, and the levels build upon each other. However, even content that conforms at AAA (triple-A) may not be fully accessible to every person with a disability. *In general, Level A success criteria achieve accessibility by supporting assistive technology while putting the fewest possible limits on presentation. Thus people with a wide range of disabilities using a wide range of assistive technologies, from voice input and eye-tracking devices to screen readers and screen magnifiers, are able to access content in different ways. In other words, Level A success criteria support the ability of both mainstream and specialized user agents to adapt content to formats that meet their users' needs. *The success criteria in Level AA provide additional support for assistive technology. At the same time, they also support direct access to content by the many people who use conventional user agents without assistive technology. In general, Level AA success criteria place more limits on visual presentation and other aspects of content than the success criteria in Level A. *Level AAA success criteria increase both direct access and access through assistive technology. They place tighter limits on both presentation and content.

(Please make sure the resolution is adapted for public consumption)