- WCAG 2.0 has *not* been released yet. Success criteria such as parsed
unambiguously and baseline may change significantly before then. I would not
recommend completing any work until WCAG 2.0 has been released as a W3C
Recommendation
Agreed we need to wait, but if WCAG 2.0 is released as a recommendation without major changes, something needs to be done to translate WCAG 2.0 into language understood by developers, so it can be implemented.
I would seriously hope the W3C employ a small team to write clear concise version of how to apply the WCAG 2.0 guidelines to technology X. (one for XHTML/CSS, another for JS etc.)
- Without spending a significant amount of time reading the documents we
need to be careful not to misinterpret particular success criteria. For
example, the parsed unambiguously success criteria specifically does *not*
require you to validate your documents.
I agreed, parsed unambiguously does not mean you must validate your documents. However, is there a tool to help you make sure the documents you write are parsed unambiguously. For HTML it is the HTML validator. Otherwise the author will need to check manually against all the user agents that fit the baseline, that they are parsed unambiguously.
- The fact that WCAG 2.0 is difficult to interpret is one of the least of
its problems - even in plain English there are checkpoints missing (one
Member of the Working Group has just lodged a formal complaint about the
lack of cognitive disability related success criteria - a complaint that I
have cosigned). Creating a plain English version of WCAG 2.0 will still be
an incomplete set of guidelines.
I disagree that interpretation is a minor problem. Yes WCAG 2.0 is seriously lacking when it comes to dealing with cognitive disabilities and there are other problems. But once WCAG 2.0 is released as a W3C recommendation, good or bad it will have an impact. The translation is need to make sure developers at least apply the WCAG 2.0 instead of ignoring it because they do not understand it.
- Joe Clark is not talking about rewriting WCAG 2.0 in plain English - he is
talking about rewriting the guidelines completely. Writing WCAG 2.0 in plain
English will legitimise a document that still has serious problems.
The problems are which guidelines will have more influence:
The WCAG 2.0 with some serious problems (and good as well) released by the W3C, or
A set of guidelines (no matter how superior) released by Joe Clark and the secretive WCAG ninja.
For the next few years at least, the W3C recommendations, they will be seen by most people as the "accessability guidelines" purely because they come from the W3C..
- This mailing list (mostly) contains people with a significant amount of
experience in the web standards area and not so much in the accessibility
area. The irony is that WCAG 2.0 practically ignores web standards entirely.
The target audience for this "translation" is the people on this mailing list, developers. The people you want writing guidelines for developers are developers with a good understanding of and care about accessibility and you should find a good few on this mailing list.
- And finally, there is not yet any evidence that we (Australia) will ever
need to refer to WCAG 2.0. HREOC - the governing body - may decide to keep
referring to WCAG 1.0 instead of WCAG 2.0. They may also decide to write
their own set of guidelines.
Do you want to talk about the HREOC guidelines on pdfs and how they are ignored by almost all of Australia (including most Government departments). Personally I do not see HREOC as the governing body, more as the sheriff whose job it is to round up the really bad offenders and publicly humilate them.
HREOC's big stick is to taking the offending company/government department to court. How do you think a case would go with HREOC saying the offending web site is inaccessible because it did not validate it's documents as required by the HREOC guidelines and the web site is inaccessible. And the defendant saying it complied with the accepted international standard, the WCAG 2.0 by ensuring that all it's documents could be parsed unambiguously. No judge is going to be able to understand the issues and with a good lawyer arguing accepted international standard vs HREOC guidelines, HREOC will be left paying hefty court costs.
Nick Cowie
B. Psychology
Web Services Consultant
State Library of Western Australia
