WebAIM - Web Accessibility In Mind

E-mail List Archives

Re: No decision from the Appeals court

for

From: Hall, Kevin (K.M.)
Date: Sep 30, 2004 8:52AM

I by no means meant to indicate that U.S. is the only country capable of screwing up copyright or accessibility laws. I am sure that many other countries are fully capable of drafting laws as idiotic or more so than my country's own. While we always strive to be world leaders in a given area sometimes we are simply outdone and I for one am not afraid to face it when that happens.

The UK web accessibility policy seems to tie itself to the W3C Accessibility Guidelines (correct me if I'm wrong on that please)... I wonder if court cases and decisions could be challenged based on differences between versions of the standard? The working draft of the WCAG Version 2 is rather different from Version 1 in its format and language. It seems interesting to me that the W3C could potentially change the outcome of court cases by revising their standard overnight. What do the rest of you think of this possibility? Is it an issue? A good or bad thing? It seems that it alleviates lawmakers of the responsibility of revising the law as time passes, they can just point to the current version of the standard... but does that leave everyone open to trouble on the day the new version of the standard is released before anyone can catch up (there is often a long lag time before new standards are accepted and widely used). It seems odd to tie the law to something so completely out of a country's control.

Regards,
-Kevin Hall