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Re: WCAG and various Laws

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From: ckrugman@sbcglobal.net
Date: Mar 30, 2010 5:48PM

Thanks, I am beginning to understand the differences somewhat as I have a
friend that was originally from England, moved to canada got his Canadian
citizenship Moved to the U.S. and a couple of years ago moved to B.C.
because of the health care and acceptance of same sex marriage. He is very
happy with the health care compared to what he received here in California.
He tells me that B.C. seems to be behind in disability access legislation
however. I have been letting him know about the web accessibility issues.
Chuck
----- Original Message -----
From: "Denis Boudreau" < <EMAIL REMOVED> >
To: "WebAIM Discussion List" < <EMAIL REMOVED> >
Sent: Tuesday, March 30, 2010 1:43 PM
Subject: Re: [WebAIM] WCAG and various Laws


> Hey there,
>
> On 2010-03-30, at 3:55 PM, < <EMAIL REMOVED> >
> < <EMAIL REMOVED> > wrote:
>
>> I find it interesting that in Canada web accessibility is being dealt
>> with
>> on a provincial level rather than something that is uniform throughout
>> Canada. Let me know if I'm not totally understanding this.
>> Chuck
>
> Actually, it's a little bit of both.
>
> There is an accessibility standard on the federal government level that
> applies to federal government websites only (CLF 2.0/WCAG 1.0, to be
> updated to CLF 3.0/WCAG 2.0 in an upcoming version).
>
> There are also accessibility standards on the provincial level that will
> apply to a variety of websites, depending on the province you look at.
>
> In Quebec for instance, we have SGQRI 008 that pretty much means WCAG 2.0.
> It applies to all government and agencies websites.
>
> In Ontario, it's AODA, but I'm not sure exactly what it aplies to yet, I
> haven't had a chance to really look into it, but I hear it will cover a
> wider spectrum than the Quebec standard.
>
> I'm guessing other provinces also have something cooking, but I have yet
> to check that out.
>
> Obviously, from my answer, I guess it shows I'm from Quebec. ;p
>
> The politics are pretty special up here so it's no surprise that there
> would be different standards depending on which governement level you're
> looking at. Not sure it's actually helping the cause, but this is how
> things are usually handled up here.
>
> As far as I can tell, there isn't really anything that's actually uniform
> across the country, may it be a11y standards or whatever, as the french-
> and english-speaking communities are from pretty different cultural
> backgrounds.
>
> Appearently, we all feel special enough to want our own thing... for
> better for for worse.
>
> For instance, an unified canadian standard would allow us to speak on
> behalf of a close to 40 million people market. That amounts to a pretty
> interesting number. Like a larger state for the US I guess.
>
> In Quebec, we only represent a 7.7 million market share. We saw how much
> that "cripples" us when our government tried to put pressure on Adobe two
> years ago for a french version of Acrobat. We barely got their attention,
> let alone changed things.
>
> We may even had more effect last week at CSUN we three of us got down at
> the Adobe booth to talk difrectly to Adobe's Accessibility Team. Politics
> wouldn't help at all.
>
> Hope this helps,
>
> --
> Denis Boudreau
> www.twitter.com/dboudreau
>
>