Patrick H. Lauke wrote:
And now I just realised that the original question was not about accessibility, but about specifications in general (such as the XHTML/CSS/etc ones). In which case, even more of a reason why the W3C can't release a spec for Flash: it's not their technology. They can't release a spec if it's owned by a commercial company.Of course they'd only be releasing *their* specs, as they relate to *their* official technologies. It would be a bit like saying "Why don't Microsoft release a spec for Quicktime movies"...
It's actually the other way around, companies and organisation developing technologies are encourage to develop them according to W3C recommendations. So
1) Web developers are encouraged to follow WCAG,
2) Authoring Tool developers are encouraged to follow ATAG (http://www.w3.org/TR/ATAG10/)
3) User Agent developers are encouraged to follow UAAG (http://www.w3.org/TR/UAAG10/)
The UAAG applies to Flash. http://www.w3.org/WAI/UA/
The current versions of Flash have improved their accessibility to some degree, thanks to both pressure from groups like this, and a fair bit of working behind the scenes by W3C accessibility people. Bob Regan is the accessibility product manager for macromedia (http://www.markme.com/accessibility/).
I notice that Macromedia is not on the UAAG participants list (http://www.w3.org/WAI/UA/wai-ua-members.html), but I think they are on the authoring list (http://www.w3.org/WAI/AU/), but not currently in good standing.
If you really want to chase up the current state of companies working with ATAG and UAAG it's best to ask Matt May (http://www.w3.org/People/Matt/), he's the guy working with these companies (last I checked). He's be a good person to throw 10 questions at for the WSG:-)
Regards Geoff ****************************************************** The discussion list for http://webstandardsgroup.org/
See http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm for some hints on posting to the list & getting help ******************************************************
