Edit comment LC-529 for Accessibility Guidelines Working Group

Quick access to

Previous: LC-1149 Next: LC-691

Comment LC-529: Comment Shortname:; Commenter: Roger Hudson <rhudson@usability.com.au>; 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:
Item Number: Conformance levels and the baseline
Part of Item:
Comment Type: GE
Comment (Including rationale for any proposed change):

I feel the proposed system of Success Criteria is potentially confusing and misleading. The document states the proposed grouping of success criteria differs in important ways to the approach taken with WCAG 1.0 since in WCAG 1.0 each checkpoint was assigned a "priority"Â? according to its impact on accessibility. While I had some concerns of the allocation of specific levels of priority to checkpoints in WCAG 1.0, I felt the overall priority approach was effective since it was easy to understand and provided clear guidance to website owners and developers

To me the use of phrases like "achieve a minimum level of accessibility" for Level 1 SC and "achieve an enhanced level of accessibility"Â? for Level 2 SC do in effect communicate levels of impact on accessibility. As such they do not seem to be much different to the old "priority" approach.

In practice, web developers and regulatory organizations used the WCAG 1.0 Priority levels as a measure for determining levels of accessibility, and they are likely to continue to do so with WCAG 2.0.

On a related point, the Note, "For each success criterion, ..."Â? is clumsily written. I am not sure what this note is intended to communicate, but I presume it is not supposed to suggest the Working Group will be the body that will determine whether a success criterion has been met. Also, if it is possible to meet a success criterion without passing the tests for all the suggested techniques, or for that matter any of the suggested techniques, then surely some people will wonder why they should consider the suggested techniques at all.

Proposed Change:

Following the principle of "when it is not broke don't fix it"Â?, I suggest the Working Group consider retaining the "priority"Â? approach, while of course making any necessary adjustments to the priority levels of some criteria.

The note referred to earlier should be either re-written or removed.; Related issues: (space separated ids); WG Notes: [TEAMA] Submitted by Team A 5/13/06 Close with: {not accept} 5/25/06 WG Teleconf Call http://www.w3.org/2006/05/25-wai-wcag-minutes.html unanimously accepted proposed resolution for 529; Resolution: Regarding your first point: The Levels in WCAG 2.0 differ from WCAG 1.0 as described. They were changed because it was determined that the description of the "priority levels" in WCAG 1.0 were inaccurate - so we could not use them in WCAG 2.0. The levels in WCAG 2.0 can however be seen as a type of priority or importance rating - and we expect that people will use them in that manner. Regarding the note: The WCAG Working Group does decide what it feels are sufficient techniques for meeting the success criterion. We do not assert that they are necessarily the only techniques - and hence we state that explicitly. Thus authors are not required to use only these techniques. They are useful to authors however, in that authors can be more sure that the techniques do meet the success criteria and they have an easier time justifying this to any third parties.; (Please make sure the resolution is adapted for public consumption)