Report of the Conformance Options Subgroup

Approved by the subgroup and submitted on 26 March 2021

As set forth in sub-team's timeline of work, we are delivering our report on those use cases we have developed which we believe are already, or could easily be covered by Silver's current design once the relevant guidelines have been written. This is that report, presenting 3 use cases which we believe meet that criterion.

Reports of initial proposals for use cases not addressed by WCAG 3 are due in April, with a further report on uncovered use cases due in May.

The three use cases presented below all fall under the principle that persons with disabilities should be able to accomplish what they want on a site without encountering a significant impediment (the precise wording for that principle is not yet final).

Covered Use Cases

We believe the following three use cases can be properly addressed by the current WCAG 3 approach when writing the relevant guidelines.

Use Case A: Missing Headers

Consider a web page with a small amount of content (e.g. 200 words), split between two headings. The headings are only displayed visually, but not marked up as headings. Screen reader users will not have the ability to skip directly to the 2nd heading, and so have to listen to / read the contents under the first heading before they discover the second. They likewise wouldn't be able to discern that the text comprising the second heading is a heading, and not part of the contents underneath it.

Use Case B: Simple Table Without Header Labels

Consider a basic two column, two row data table, that is missing row & column headers. An example is name, phone number, next row.

Use Case C: Fixed Width Content That Doesn't Quite Scale All The Way

Consider text content that is fixed width in an initial viewport width of 1,280 pixels, and which correctly increased text size without causing scrolling through 380% (where the guideline potentially requires 400%). When the user requests that the text be larger (between 380% and 400%), the content doesn't get any larger than 380%.