Edit comment LC-649 for Accessibility Guidelines Working Group

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Comment LC-649: Comment Shortname:; Commenter: Geoff Freed <geoff_freed@wgbh.org> on behalf of WGBH National Center for Accessible Media; 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:
Part of Item:
Comment Type: TE
Comment (including rationale for proposed change):

Regarding baseline: I\'ve read and re-read all the documentation about baseline and I just don\'t understand it. It seems like baseline is a great way to blame the victim: an author can claim that a user\'s accessibility problems are, in fact, strictly his or her problems. The answer to any complaint is, \"That\'s not in my baseline, so I didn\'t test for it.\" The only way it might be useful is in a closed environment, such as an Intranet, where authors really do know what technologies users have. And the fact that baseline requires an entirely separate explanatory document indicates to me that it is *far* too complex to be useful.

Regarding scoping: \"Scoping\" of a conformance claim introduces a perfect loophole for anyone who simply doesn\'t want to do the work required to make things accessible. Take Example 2: \"A site has a collection of videos for which it is not required to and does not want to claim accessibility.\" \"Not required?\" But aren\'t captions required by SC 1.2? Is \"I don\'t want to\" now a valid excuse? Further, Example 2 states that a scoped conformance claim of \"I don\'t want to caption/describe the videos\" is valid as long as the videos are played only in a standalone player. But if the videos are embedded in a Web page, suddenly they *must* be made accessible...? I don\'t see the distinction. Video is video. If I\'ve created an on-line physics curriculum that uses a standalone player to show an entire semester of lectures, you\'re saying that these videos do *not* have to be accessible if I \"scope\" my conformance claim to exclude these materials?

Proposed Change:

1. Delete baseline.
2. Delete scoping.; Related issues: baseline_replaced
(space separated ids); WG Notes: [TEAMA] Discussed in the 08 February 2007 telecon: Resolution: close 649 as ammended http://www.w3.org/WAI/GL/2007/02/08-wai-wcag-minutes.html {partial accept} DONE Need to align the language in this response to the final decision around "established lists."; Resolution: The conformance section of WCAG2 has been completely rewritten. The term "baseline" has been replaced by "accessibility-supported Web technologies". The issue of what it means to be an accessibility-supported Web technology is addressed in the section "Accessibility Support of Web Technologies" at http://www.w3.org/TR/2007/WD-WCAG20-20070517/#accessibility-support . The guidelines and success criteria remain technology-independent, in order to allow conformance using any Web technology. In choosing Web technologies, authors must use technologies that are supported by users' assistive technologies as well as the accessibility features in browsers and other user agents. Such technologies are referred to as "accessibility supported." To make it easier for authors who may not be familiar with assistive technologies, documented lists of technologies that are accessibility supported will be available from WAI and other sources. The "Scope out" language has now been removed from the Conformance section and conformance is now based on Web page(s): that is a primary resource referenced by a URI and any other resources that are rendered simultaneously with it with the understanding that different sub elements or resources may be rendered simultaneously with the primary resource at different points in time.; (Please make sure the resolution is adapted for public consumption)