Comments on: Delivering Inclusive Websites

By: Chris Hunt

Chris Hunt — Thu, 29 Nov 2007 16:44:00 +0000

It’s technically just a working draft. So how can you use that as your current standard?

Presumably the same way we used CSS 2.1 between August 2002 and July this year. I wish I could get away with working as slowly as these web standards guys.

By: JackP

JackP — Tue, 27 Nov 2007 21:19:03 +0000

@Nick:
I’ve got to say that the Samurai Errata are certainly an improvement on WCAG 1.0. Again the problem there is that these aren’t really “official” standards - and I don’t think they are perfect either, but I’m not going to nit-pick here as I’ve already nit-picked elsewhere and on the whole Joe et al have done a bloody good job.

My personal vote would be for UK public sector guidelines on a gov.uk site which were regularly reviewed and updated at least yearly, as per Mike’s suggestion. Failing that however, I’d probably go towards WCAG 2.0 as one of the …

…darn. I didn’t want to nit-pick. Sorry Joe.

…one of the things with the Errata is that they penalise poor standards (i.e. layout tables are banned). I agree that it’s wrong to use layout tables, but when you’re talking about a standard that must be achieved otherwise the gov.uk domain is taken away, I think you need to be concentrating on those things which specifically penalise disabled users rather than those things which aren’t good practice but aren’t necessarily harmful.

But for a standard to aim for, the Errata aren’t bad at all; and they’d certainly be a better set to use than the standard WCAG 1.0. I just wouldn’t necessarily look to censure sites that fail to live up to this…

By: Mike Cherim

Mike Cherim — Tue, 27 Nov 2007 14:17:57 +0000

I think the WCAG 1, though officially out-of-date, still seems applicable and fairly accurate on most checkpoints. The thing is, regardless of the rules one adheres to, the outdated WCAG 1 or the larval WCAG 2, the needs of those who require accessibility are constant. Individuals should understand these needs, then compliance become a matter of meeting visitor requirements. If it’s not the needs of those who require accessibility and their technology that we’re meeting, if it’s a set of guidelines (to be official I guess) then we’re catering to the spec and we’re always going to a step or three behind. Right now we contend with AJAX and whatnot. By the time the WCAG 2 comes out as a recommendation, it’ll be TIDE or FEDEX, or some other acronym’d technology. Accessibility specs, if they’re going to change and support current implementations, then they need to need updated almost annually.

I think we almost need two: One for the basic stuff that doesn’t change (a well thought-out and edited WCAG 1 base version perhaps) then annual updates to incorporate new technology.

As far as the who… I think any non-private, commerce, business, government, educational, or institutional site should be mandated to comply. Not tying to say they can’t have a cool Flash thing or some other basically inaccessible content, they just need to back it up in a way that is accessible.

By: Nick

Nick — Tue, 27 Nov 2007 11:01:50 +0000

Hi, it might be a silly comment but are the WCAG Samurai’s errata not usable by anyone? I haven’t really followed the discussion so don’t know if they’re disputed. Are they not used as a stop-gap simply because they are not endorsed by the W3C? We do need an end to this limbo, it just drags on and on.