Steven Clark wrote:
Has everyone read Gez Lemon's post on Validity and Accessibility?
http://juicystudio.com/article/validity-accessibility.php
Validation got moved down from level 1 to level 2 in the WCAG...
Steven Clark
I understand why it was given P2 status in WCAG 1.0, as that was way
back in 1999, but for all the reasons we try to adopt standards, and for
all the reasons we try to support them, I cannot find any good arguments
for dumbing them down.
I feel the W3C WAIGL may be trying to be helpful here, they are trying
to be as expansive and inclusive as possible to all, they really do work
hard at that, but what I think most people here understand, is that the
standards themselves are meant to be inclusive. Isn't there evidence
enough on lists like this that shows a community of developers working
together to solve such problems whilst still working with standards? I
mean, surely the only reason one would do that is out of the benefits,
and not out of any dogmatic propensity to just abide by a set of
standards. If that is the case, why is there need to be regressive?
What I feel is happening here is that they are catering for the ATAG
(http://www.w3.org/WAI/AU/) and UAAG (http://www.w3.org/WAI/UA/) world,
who are trailing behind the web standards based developers, and WCAG is
trying to accommodate that. I don't really know, it's just outsider
looking in.
There are a lot of tools and user agents that need to be applauded for
the efforts to better support W3C standards, but at the same time there
are some, well many, that really need the ATAG and UTAG tests applied to
them to show them for what they are. Unfortunately very few people are
willing to do this, and I can understand why, along with time and
everything else, who really wants to be a web standards reviewer of
tools and user agents? I have thought about doing this myself, but I
have found that the inner voice of criticism far outweighs the inner
voice of complements when approaching such subject matter, and it seems
just such a waste of time to get involved in if that is the outcome,
even if it does help prompt some companies to address issues in their
products. But maybe it is time to do so.
I have thought about setting up a wiki to address this issue (I have the
web server space to do it), and others regarding accessibility, because
even if you go ahead and put Dreamweaver and FrontPage, and the rest of
them, to the ATAG test, there should also be some knowledge base to show
people who want to work with those products, or who are "locked into"
working with those products, ways, means and methods to use these tools,
in conjunction with other techniques and tools, to produce standards
compliant web content.
If WCAG2 allows validation to be watered down to L2, I can only see this
as being soft on ATAG and UTAG sectors of the industry, again making it
much harder for developers. Really, isn't so much of our time,
knowledge and development now spent on working with the many user agent
and tool bugs and shortcomings? It's ridiculous to keep pandering to
these weaknesses in our industry and actually accommodating their
lethergy to do anything through the actual standards.
Maybe there should be either collective letter of protest written or
individual voice their public concern over this to :
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
Regards
Geoff Deering
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