----- Original Message -----
From: "Jukka Korpela" <[log in to unmask]>
To: "wai-ig list" <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Tuesday, November 05, 2002 7:13 AM
Subject: RE: discussion:Fw: What is the problem with accessible pop-up
win dows?



Jon Hanna wrote:

> I seem to recall that the EU were talking
> about priority 1 for a certain deadline to be followed by
> priority 2 for a later one.

There is specific statement by the Parliament that makes priority 2 the
current goal:
"[The European Parliament,]
30.   Stresses the fact that for websites to be accessible it is
essential
that they are double-A compliant, that priority 2 of the WAI guidelines
must
be fully implemented;"
http://www2.europarl.eu.int/omk/sipade2?PUBREF=-//EP//TEXT+REPORT+A5-200
2-01
47+0+DOC+SGML+V0//EN

> This seems a reasonable practical response to the
> reality of there being a large number of inaccessible
> pages and practices in use.

I don't think it's necessarily a good strategy. To take my favorite
example,
achieving priority 1 conformance (in reality, as opposite to what
checkers
might say at least when misinterpreted), you would need to check each
and
every word of each and every document and use language markup (lang
and/or
xml:lang attributes, introducing new markup elements when needed)
whenever
there are phrases or words (e.g., names) in a language other than the
main
language of the document. This is a time-consuming thing, even if good
editing tools are available. And it's something to be aimed at, but
hardly
as more urgent than any priority 2 or 3 checkpoints.

It would probably be better if there were no "priorities", no A/AA/AAA
classification, no "levels", just a set of rules. It would be useful to
characterize the rules according to their current practical impact _and_
implementation difficulty, but this should be a changing document which
is
not part of the guidelines document, and it could be locally modified
for
particular environments.

--
Jukka Korpela, senior adviser
TIEKE Finnish Information Society Development Centre
http://www.tieke.fi/
Diffuse Business Guide to Web Accessibility and Design for All:
http://www.diffuse.org/accessibility.html