Editorial principles for WCAG2ICT

To ensure self-consistency, the following editorial principles are used for WCAG2ICT. Checking for adherence to these principles is a step in the publication process.

Editorial style

WCAG2ICT follows the W3C Manual of Style. Some additional conventions:

• The word "web" is not capitalized unless used as a noun, i.e., "the Web". Otherwise it is lower case, e.g., "web applications". This is a different convention than used in WCAG 2.0. Capitalization from WCAG 2.0 is preserved in direct quotes.
• Titles use sentence case, i.e., only the initial word begins with a capital letter.

Abbreviations

Consistent with WCAG, abbreviations are presented the first time with their full expanded form followed by the abbreviation in parentheses. Further uses of the abbreviated form may use the <abbr> element.

The following terms are not abbreviated:

• Success Criterion (not SC).
• Assistive technology (not AT).

Typography

WCAG2ICT uses modern typographical characters. Key characters that may need to be replaced for ASCII characters include:

• "Curly quotes" (“” and ‘’) instead of straight quotes (" and ').
• Em dash (—) instead of double hyphens (--) - noting there are no spaces around an em dash.
• En dash (–) instead of single hyphens to separate phrases (not currently used).
• Double spaces are avoided including after periods. It is necessary to replace non-breaking spaces with ordinary spaces due to how the content arrives from the Google site.
• Punctuation should not be surrounded by extraneous spaces. Slash characters, however, do have spaces on both sides.

Document sections

In the Table of Contents, only "top-level" sections are numbered.

Headers for each section are numbered to the second level, not below.

Appendices use a letter for the top level, and a number for the second level.

Quotes from WCAG

Content quoted from WCAG and Understanding is, as much as feasible, identical to the original and not updated to reflect WCAG2ICT guidance. The following changes are made:

• URIs are changed to absolute URIs to the appropriate resource.
• Notes use the WCAG2ICT note class directly on the note (<p class="note">) rather than enclosing the note in a div (<div class="note">).

Repeated phrases

The following phrases are used frequently and should be applied in a consistent form:

• The WCAG2ICT Task Force is referred to as the "Task Force".
• WCAG2ICT guidance for guidelines and Success Criteria begin with "This applies directly as written, and as described in Intent from Understanding ## (also provided below)".
• WCAG2ICT guidance for glossary entries begin with "This applies directly as written and as described in the WCAG 2.0 glossary".
• Guidance that substitutes content continues with ", replacing ## with ##".
• When a redefined form of WCAG content is included, it is introduced with "With this substitution, it would read:" checking for appropriate pluralization'.

Redefinitions of WCAG content

Where WCAG2ICT guidance changes the wording of something from WCAG, the full modified version is provided in WCAG2ICT. When doing so, the following applies:

• Inserted or changed content is enclosed in an <ins> element.
• Deleted content is simply deleted, not enclosed in <del>.
• Links to glossary terms redefined in WCAG2ICT have their URI updated to point to the WCAG2ICT version, and the class "wcag2ict_termref" applied. Otherwise they continue to point to WCAG with the "termref" class.
• Links to glossary terms have the title attribute "WCAG Definition: <term>" or "WCAG2ICT Definition: <term>" as appropriate.

Note that when the redefinition of WCAG content includes a reference to a redefined glossary term, the cross reference points directly to the redefined glossary term, i.e., to the <dt> element containing the term. However, when references to such terms are made elsewhere in the WCAG2ICT guidance (typically in notes following the redefinition) the reference is not styled as a "termref" and the reference points to the main section in Key Terms or the WCAG2ICT guidance on glossary so readers will access the guidance surrounding they redefined term.