WebAIM - Web Accessibility In Mind

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Re: open vs. closed products or accessibility supported or not

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From: Tim Harshbarger
Date: Feb 22, 2011 2:27PM

Looking at the WCAG 2.0 information about "accessibility supported", I
don't think the existence of inspection tools are necessary to consider
the technology accessibility supported.

It seems to me that as long as the technology allows an application to
pass information through an accessibility framework to user
agents/assistive technology and that information is then passed along to
the user, then the technology could be considered accessibility
supported.

If my understanding is correct, then I would think the only thing that
is necessary to determine if a technology is accessibility supported
would be to set up a series of test cases using the technology to see if
accessibility information is conveyed to the user. An inspection tool
would be useful in determining where any failures occur, but the test
case would just have to fail for the technology to be considered not
accessibility supported.