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Re: New blog post: To Hell with Compliance

for

From: Jukka K. Korpela
Date: Jan 6, 2015 11:55AM

2015-01-06, 18:40, Karl Groves wrote:

> http://www.karlgroves.com/2015/01/06/to-hell-with-compliance/

I’m not sure whether I get the point, but it seems to be that the WCAG
2.0 requirements do not say that “that the equivalent to the non-text
content must approximate, as closely as possible, the purpose and
meaning of the non-text content”. However, the requirement quoted refers
to “a text alternative that serves the equivalent purpose”. To me, this
appears as a stricter requirement: it requires equivalence, not just
best approximation to equivalence. Such a strict requirement is
unrealistic, but that’s a different issue.

Regarding the failures list, there’s “F30: Failure of Success Criterion
1.1.1 and 1.2.1 due to using text alternatives that are not
alternatives”. The name of the failure and its description could be
improved, since as written, they are self-contradictory (alternatives
are not alternatives) or obscure (the reader is expected to understand
the word “alternative” in two different meanings. It would be better
formulated by saying “text alternatives that are not equivalent to the
non-text content”.

In reality, equivalence is often impossible, and then it becomes
important to distinguish between degrees of correspondence. But this
means that the current criteria for compliance are too strict, rather
than too vague.

Yucca