While it is an early stage draft this is a good opportunity for us to
become envolved in the process of developping the next generation of
the web content accessability guidelines which are being developped in
order to help us keep pace with the rapidly changing face of our
technology.
Thanks and sorry for the cross post of such an important announcement.
----- Original Message -----
From: "Judy Brewer" <[log in to unmask]>
To: "WAI Interest Group" <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: January 25, 2001 5:12 PM
Subject: Please review: Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 2.0
Working Draft


WAI Interest Group Members,

The Web Content Accessibility Guidelines Working Group (WCAG WG) of
W3C's
Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI) published the first public Working
Draft
of WCAG 2.0 on 25 January 2001 [1]. This Working Draft shows how more
generalized (less HTML-specific) WCAG checkpoints might read. This
draft is
not based on consensus of the WCAG Working Group, nor has it gone
through
W3C process. Checkpoints in this Working Draft in no way supersede the
checkpoints in WCAG 1.0.

This is a preliminary document, not stable or referenceable yet, with
much
work still to be done. If you are interested in comparing checkpoints
in
WCAG 1.0 with evolving checkpoints in the WCAG 2.0 Working Draft,
please
refer to the Checkpoint Mapping [2]. Feedback will be welcome
throughout
the course of document development, but feedback in the early stages
of
document development is especially useful.

At this stage we invite comments on two mailing lists:
- For any comments that you want to be sure are registered with the
WCAG
Working Group regarding the January 25th WCAG 2.0 Working Draft,
please
send them to [log in to unmask] by Thursday, 22 February, 2001.
- For general discussion about this Working Draft, please comment on
[log in to unmask] That discussion will be monitored to some extent by
the
WCAG Working Group, but it does not guarantee that every issue raised
there
will be registered with the Working Group for formal discussion.

The WCAG Working Group welcomes comment on any aspect of the draft,
but is
particularly interested in feedback on the following issues:

1. Are the checkpoints and guidelines in the WCAG 2.0 Working Draft
easier
to understand than in WCAG 1.0?  Has terminology been used that is
hard to
understand?  We realize that filling in the Glossary will help with
some of
these issues. Are there terms that are not listed in the Glossary that
should be?

2. This initial public WCAG 2.0 Working Draft does not have as much
explanation for each guideline as WCAG 1.0. This is partially because
the
WCAG Working Group has discussed a three-layered approach, with the
first
layer being more explanatory (what are the basic ideas about Web
content
accessibility, how can this document be referenced, etc.), the second
layer
being the guidelines and checkpoints explaining how to make a Web site
accessible, and the third being techniques, tests, and/or examples
that
would help explain how to implement this in different Web
technologies.
What do people think about this approach? It might be hard to imagine
since
the current Working Draft only includes the second layer, but we would
appreciate your thoughts on this.

3. There are only 22 Checkpoints in the WCAG 2.0 Working Draft versus
over
60 in WCAG 1.0. Have we generalized things too much, or does it make
it
easier to grasp the concepts?

4. Note that there are many open issues [3] that the WCAG Working
Group
needs to discuss, and that this is just the first of many Working
Drafts.

5. Other suggestions or comments are welcome.

This message may be circulated to other lists, but please be careful
to
avoid cross-postings.

Thank you for your review,

Judy Brewer and Wendy Chisholm, on behalf of the WCAG WG

[1] http://www.w3.org/TR/WCAG20
[2] http://www.w3.org/WAI/GL/WCAG20/2001/01/25-mapping.html
[3] http://www.w3.org/WAI/GL/wcag20-issues.html

--
Judy Brewer    [log in to unmask]    +1.617.258.9741
http://www.w3.org/WAI
Director, Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI) International Program
Office
World Wide Web Consortium (W3C)
MIT/LCS Room NE43-355, 200 Technology Square, Cambridge, MA,  02139,
USA


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