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

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From: Loretta Guarino Reid
Date: Jan 9, 2013 8:17AM

On Wed, Jan 9, 2013 at 2:22 AM, Joshue O Connor < <EMAIL REMOVED> >wrote:

> 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.
>

Note that the WCAG group publishes a draft for public review before
incorporating changes or new techniques, so you will have an opportunity to
review and provide feedback before the Understanding and Techniques
documents are updated.

>
> 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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