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Re: A clear EU accessibility law proposed? At what cost?

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From: Ramón Corominas
Date: Dec 22, 2012 9:06AM

My understanding is that WCAG 2.0 applies to any document that is
offered via web. If not, it would be trivial to force PDF files to
always download (for example, with an HTTP header "content-disposition:
attachment") and thus bypass the need for accessibility.

Regards,
Ramón.

Birkir wrote:

> I believe that off-line documentation does not fall under the
> definition of "web content" even if it is downloaded from a website. I
> wonder, with a PDF form with a submit button, whether that is
> web-content, though the user can work on it off-line, but my
> understanding of WCAG 2.0 (and anyone feel free to correct me if I am
> wrong), is that off-line documents are not something coverred natively
> by the standard, though the standard could be applied almost in its
> entirety to such documents (see the WAI document draft on applying
> WCAG to none web-ICTs).
>
> If I am wrong, and WCAG applies to these documents, then we are in
> good shape. If not, I'd want it to be explicitly stated in the EU
> directive that documents downloaded from websites need to be
> accessible as well, ideally applying the principles of WCAG to
> evaluating these documents.
> I have seen too many WCAG 2.0 AA compliant websites where you can
> download untagged PDF forms with no labels, sometimes even PDF
> documents that are simply pictures of text and/or Microsoft Word
> documents using content controls that are inaccessible to screen
> readers, and even mouse-only controls (that even from a social
> security administration website).