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Re: W3C Guidelines

for

From: John Foliot
Date: Jan 28, 2010 5:57PM

Geof Collis wrote:
>
> Hi All
>
> I'm having a bit of a debate where someone says that the members of
> the W3c at the time wrote the guidelines for WCAG 1.0 and I'm
> wondering if this is true. I thought that they got input from the web
> community and based them on their feedback. Can anyone shed some
> light on the process?

Both statements are actually correct - the WCAG 1 Guidelines were written
by members of the WAI within W3C, based upon feedback and input from
affected community members (some of the early work however was initiated
at the Trace Center via Gregg Vanderheiden). This is actually how most
W3C Recommendations are developed, but back in 1997 - 1999 there were
fewer voices involved in the discussions. (It's interesting to note some
of those early voices, including Gregg Vanderheiden [Trace], TV Raman [now
at Google], Mike Paciello, Phill Jenkins [IBM], Jon Gunderson
[Urbana-Champaign], and Chuck Letourneau [one of the original Co-Chairs,
and my mentor in the early days].

Going back over the W3C email archives of the time will show the relative
progress path that WCAG 1 took, and actually makes for interesting reading
if you like history. The archives can be found at:
http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/w3c-wai-gl/

Also related to that list was the WAI Interest Group, whos archive can be
found at:
http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/w3c-wai-ig/

Cheers!

JF