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Re: The future of WCAG - maximising its strengths not its weaknesses

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From: Joshue O Connor
Date: Jan 9, 2013 3:22AM

Dr Jonathan Hassell wrote:
> Thanks for this, Joshue.
>
> Good to see something's happening - I felt sure it must be.
>
> Is there a way that people outside the drafting committee can see the work you're doing?

Unfortunately, right now no. This isn't for any conspiratorial reason I
can assure you, its just that with any new techniques, to effectively
provide guidance on using HTML5 and ARIA, they need to be pretty bullet
proof before anything is released. If we did this prematurely, then
something may get incorrectly codified as best practice or indeed be
seen to have be given some kind of imprimatur from the W3C, when it's
actually a work in progress. So this work is currently ongoing and has
been for over a year, by members of both Protocols and Formats (PFWG)
and the WCAG group itself.

Within the HTML5/ARIA Techniques task force, where we are creating these
techniques, and to be clear our job isn't to update the core WCAG SC or
anything like that (so apologies for any confusion), we are developing a
current point of reference and guidance to give devs a much needed steer
in the right direction. To do this, we need to provide robust useful
examples, and also attempt to indicate any user agent support issues for
various element/attribute/states/properties etc. To call it a moveable
feast, would be an understatement but as specifications become more
stable, and user agent support improves, I see things ramping up.

As Gregg pointed out, WCAG itself is stable and needs to be for obvious
reasons but in terms of creating fresh techniques - we are making progress.

Cheers

Josh


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