31 Ho hum ... no change there then

I last read through WCAG about 12 months ago, and I had hoped that they might have been distilled into more sense by now, but it seems not.

The scripting guidelines were by biggest concern before; at the time, the only work I could use to describe them is “nonsense”. Looking at the revised guidelines .. well they’re better, but (at a quick summary) they’re still dominated by tips and practical suggestions which:

1 – bely a lack of practical experience of scripting with accessibility in mind

2 – have not been properly tested aside from a narrow range of the verry latest devices

3 – pass on the same bad advice and misconceptions as WCAG (eg event-pairing, which is utterly and demonstrably wrong)

I shall compile and publish a more detailed breakdown when I have a bit more time.

posted at 02:44 pm on May 24, 2006 by James Edwards

33 WCAG Ronin

I think it’s great that Joe is going to write some errata for the WCAG recommendations and make that available to the rest of us. If he wants to do that with a private list of people he wants to work with – great. If he wants to do it all by himself -great.

That doesn’t stop anyone else from getting together with their colleagues, writing about accessibility, and sharing it with others. If enough people agree with what you’ve written, it will gain traction. If it’s not very good (like Joe suggests of WCAG 2) people will keep looking for alternatives.

If you don’t like the WCAG process, and you don’t like Joe’s process… make your own.

posted at 04:34 pm on May 24, 2006 by Stuart Robertson

34 petition process

I work in the Mass.Gov Office for the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. We have spent a lot of time and effort over the years educating and cajoling state agencies about web accessibility, which is required by federal and state laws. We relied heavily on WCAG 1 and 508 in drafting our standards, but are concerned that WCAG2 won’t be much help to us in the future.

My immediate concern, however, is that we won’t be able finish absorbing all this content in time to file comments. You advise that we ‘petition for at least another month’s commenting time, quoting W3C process back to them (viz., comment periods “may last longer if the technical report is complex or has significant external dependencies”).’ How exactly do we do such a thing? We have attorneys in the Mass. Office on Disabilities who need to know, and I’m having no luck finding guidance on the W3C site.

posted at 04:56 pm on May 24, 2006 by Sarah Bourne

35 Untitled

I don’t have time to understand or decipher guidelines. They have to be dog simple and technically possible for me to implement them.

I look forward to what the Samurai Group comes up with, especially if it’s dog simple and technically possible to implement.

“Here. Do this tag.”

posted at 05:01 pm on May 24, 2006 by John Dunagan

37 Obscure guidelines

Oh, good, so it wasn’t just me. I am utterly baffled by WCAG 2’s definitions and levels.
Regarding Christophe Strobbe’s comment that “WCAG is not just for today’s standardistas�: if anything, WCAG 2 in its current form would discourage the adoption of accessible development practices beyond the circle of those who already do it. Even under WCAG 1, the goal should be accessibility rather than compliance with a single (somewhat flawed) standard. If you are determined to achieve the goal, it is still possible to get the information you need from a multitude of sources out there, but it requires more research. WCAG 2 has made that situation worse. Also, its obscurity puts people who are mandated to create accessible sites in an awkward position.

Mr. Clark: Regarding your remark that “[WCAG 1] Priority 3 is irrelevant and unattainable�. Wouldn’t you say that “9.4—Create a logical tab order through links, form controls, and objects.� is still pretty good advice?

By the way, Kevin Cornell’s horse-backwards (as opposed to ass-backwards) illustration is a pretty disturbing image!

posted at 11:18 pm on May 24, 2006 by Michelangelo Iaffaldano

38 Who are these people?

Unbelievable. This is utterly astounding to me. Who are these people and how did they commandeer WCAG 2?

Thank you, Joe, for pointing out this atrocity to those of us who have been (until now) unaware of it. I would assume most web designers/developers (even those of us who have dedicated years to web standards) have not been actively following the development of WCAG 2. So for this article, you have our gratitude.

Wow. I am completely stunned.

posted at 11:30 pm on May 24, 2006 by Mark Wyner

39 F28 - Transparent and Lazy

Great read, thanks for posting this!

At first I thought Mr. Clark was overacting, but in browsing over the article, I began to share his feelings of disappointment and frustration.

I’d like to highlight/expand on a point made by Joe about the following:
http://www.w3.org/TR/WCAG20-TECHS/#F28-procedure

It says that your code must produce the same DOM structure across user agents. However, assuming the same (X)HTML code, this should be the responsibility of the user agents as opposed to the Web Content Authors (I think WCAG refers to them as unambiguous web component author units?).

Take the following code snippet as example:

<table><tr><td>hello world</td></tr></table>

Most browsers assume a <tbody> between the <table> and <tr>. However if one doesn’t, it’s our problem. This means scripted browser sniffing and manipulation of (X)HTML (either server- or client-side).

Isn’t this counter to accessibility? Not to mention standard good practices, maintainability, proper seperation of content and logic, etc…

So what’s the motivation for this? The only people who can benefit from this are sloppy implementors of core user agents, or technologies that sit on top of these (ie screen readers) and don’t want to have to deal with this, so they’re foisting it off on us.

This is a transparent attempt to put the onus of fixing broken or deviating (X)HTML to DOM implementations in various browsers on Web Content Authors and not where they belong: the makers of the user agents, and, to a lesser degree, the makers of the technology sitting on top of these user agents.

Most of what Mr. Clark has pointed out are pretty strong flaws in the standard, but this is to me the clearest example of the conflicted, biased, and unreasonable nature of the spec. Further, pitching this self-interested counter-standards schlock a supporting/furthering accessiblity needs (which NEED supporting and furthering) gets my dander up, since the only people this seems to support are the authors.

I hope whatever governance is in place at W3C reins these guys in quickly, or some well intentioned but uninformed legislator could make this stuff law…

posted at 11:43 pm on May 24, 2006 by Taylor Mathewson