W3C

- DRAFT -

Accessibility Conformance Testing Teleconference

23 Apr 2026

Attendees

Present
Kathy, giacomo-petri, Godwin, Wilco, Jean-Yves, Sage
Regrets
Chair
SV_MEETING_CHAIR
Scribe
Jean-Yves

Contents


scribe+

standup

Sage: attended subgroup last week and week before. Things going alright.

<Wilco> scribe+

Sage: no particular sticking point

<Wilco> JYM: Agreed. One question is the rule they're currently writing seems very generic. I understand where they come from .I don't know how strong we should push back.

<Wilco> ... It looks like this might not be enough. So far I haven't pushed against that. The group is moving in a good direction. Not sure if we should push back.

scribe+

Kathy: "text and wording", haven't had ACT on agenda for a couple weeks.
... latest attempt was on diacritics. Internationalization group pushed back.
... the group is supportive with ACT format so far.
... only one person drafting the rule, the rest is not that technical.

Godwin: did new revision for Glossary page; worked on making previews available.
... in my group, 3 people working on rules, rather intersested.
... same question as JY for strictness in pushing back.
... should we allow very new (unsupported?) ARIA attribute?

giacomo-petri: subgroup working on drafting ACT rules. It is not easy.
... It requires time to reach our level of clarity and quality.
... I've reviewed the latest survey. Also has some very broad Applicability, maybe things should move to assumptions.
... I think the idea is OK, though.
... Composite rule of Steps indicated; each Atomic is not a guaranteed failure. We should inform people working on template about these scenarios.

<Wilco> https://www.w3.org/wbs/35422/wcag3-provision-survey-02/

giacomo-petri: there is a lot to review; deep look on the one from my group, but only surface look on the rest.

WCAG 3 surveys

<Wilco> https://www.w3.org/wbs/35422/wcag3-provision-survey-02/

Wilco: this is the second AGWG survey with ACT rule.
... we should all look at these survey.
... you can also look at the result to see who already looked at them and which need more time.
... I'll try to make this a regular agenda item.
... We can be fairly critical in our comments here, to improve future iterations.

Informative / not required for conformance

Kathy: Shenguo's group was looking at the "all ACT rules page" were it says there are not required, group asked why do them if they are not required.
... maybe would be better if we remove "not required" and only keep "informative"

Wilco: It says so in several places.
... "not required" is maybe a bit strong, due to the fail-on-fail relationship.

Kathy: leaving it as "informative" has the same meaning, but looks less strong than "not required".
... "normative" is the SC language, that's the requirement. "Informative" is supporting information and documentation for each of the normative bits.

Wilco: If there is a disagreement between an ACT rule (informative) and the SC (normative), the SC is right.
... Rules are "not required", but failing a rule does fail WCAG (there is consensus on that relationship).

<Wilco> https://www.w3.org/WAI/standards-guidelines/act/rules/

Wilco: we could update the last sentence of the summary in the "all rule" page.
... we could remove the "not required" part, keeping only the "informative" part.

Kathy: how about "informative and serve as guidance"?

Wilco: sounds good. Will make that change.

standup

Support for newer tech in WCAG 3 rules

Godwin: specifically, someone made an example with "aria-errormessage" which has poor support currently.
... one argument "for" using it is that WCAG3 is still far away and browsers might use it by then.

giacomo-petri: should be clear about author errors and what new technologies will/should handle.

Wilco: I think we should refrain from using it now, making an Accessibility Support note.
... specifically, "aria-errormessage" has been "coming soon" for a long time.

Godwin: using it might give readers the wrong impression.

<Godwin> https://a11ysupport.io/tech/aria/aria-errormessage_attribute

<Wilco> JYM: I agree, the rules aren't frozen. If supported in two years we can change the rule

Godwin: having the Accessibility Support note will make it easier to spot later, when it becomes supported.

Wilco: we can put that in the WCAG3/ACT FAQ.

pushing back on generalized rules (JYM)

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1N2rWpUTAN_u6fP53k9V1q5EjI5drMY7fXFu6i5xfmws/edit?tab=t.gzup53k7r55e#heading=h.8n0bgpgc26b3

Jean-Yves: Applicability is very blurry "applies to text color" has a lot of unprecised stuff. Should we push against that now (risk: people can become disgruntled about ACT rules in general), or later (risk: quality won't improve), or slowly, …

Sage:  nothing is immediately jumping out to me.

Kathy: Do they define "background color"? Expectation seems to contain steps for the tester; should we provide instruction? Is it too much subjectivity?

Wilco: "background" seems indeed undefined. The best we can do is to raise questions, try to come up with definitions.
... we want to encourage people to think in that direction.

Godwin: "logo" and "photograph" are also undefined. Subjectivity is OK, but not ambiguity.

giacomo-petri: I've reviewed the rule. This generic use of the term is also due to the requirement.
... this could cover the "graphical object" part of the requirement. Maybe it is not really testable and that is an indication that the requirement should be improved.

Jean-Yves: Maybe the rule should also be broken down by content type (text/UI component/…)

giacomo-petri: Having a "catch all" requirement is maybe also a problem as some parts can be hard to met.

Wilco: many things don't change due to, e.g., dark mode. More than logo and photograph.

Summary of Action Items

Summary of Resolutions

[End of minutes]

Minutes manually created (not a transcript), formatted by David Booth's scribe.perl version 1.200 (CVS log)
$Date: 2026/04/23 15:00:37 $

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