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Re: JavaScript and WCAG 2.0

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From: Andrew Kirkpatrick
Date: Jul 16, 2014 6:49AM

Todd,
I believe that Jon has correctly described the situation related to WCAG 2.0 and JavaScript.

Of course, you are also correct in that there are some users that may have problems if a site relies on JavaScript (or ARIA, or HTML5, or PDF, or SVG, or...). The goal of WCAG 2.0 conformance cannot be to guarantee that all users have complete access to content, but instead it is to dramatically increase the likelihood that users will have an accessible experience. There will always be some users that will experience barriers with some types of content and there will always be more that could be done to ensure that more users can access the content.

This is a key challenge for a standard like WCAG 2.0 - balancing the possible benefits to users with the impact on authors. We could make a standard that is more aggressive in addressing a larger set of user needs, but then there is the risk that the standard would be regarded as too difficult to implement and may not be adopted into policies. We also see this with the WCAG 2.0 levels (A, AA, AAA), where policies adopting WCAG are generally referencing A or AA.

If you see issues that you feel need to be addressed, I encourage you to submit comments or questions via the WCAG 2.0 public comment form (http://www.w3.org/WAI/WCAG20/comments/onlineform) - the group is always willing to get feedback on current text and areas for improvement.

Thanks,
AWK