Also ARIA became a bit of a buzz since only three days before Microsoft announced support for it in Internet Explorer 8. So there is partial support in Firefox 1.5, more in Firefox 2.0, and full support including liveregions for dynamically updated content in Firefox 3.0. Also Opera 9.5 has it. It can be used today as it doesn’t break old browsers, they will simply ignore the new attributes. Don’t hesitate, you can do good with it right now.

In the meantime Aaron Leventhal and his fellows were busy negotiating with members of the HTML5 working group to find a way of implementation without namespacing. So as of Firefox 3.0 it will be <img role="checkbox" aria-checked="false" /> instead of the previous namespaced notation aaa:checked="false".

Microsoft also thought about addressing the new attributes in the DOM, alas they did it the old proprietary way instead of sitting at a virtual or real table with the other browser vendors and thinking of a common way to do this. Opera’s Anne van Kesteren and the participants at the Browser Wars panel at SXSW were picking heavily on that subject. I believe the IE team got the message, but for the moment I would suggest to ignore the non-standard DOM attributes.

Thanks again to Gez, Becky, Lisa, and Shawn for their input and help. You made this a first-class experience!

Further reading

• W3C WAI-ARIA Overview
• Mozilla Developer Center ARIA FAQ
• A List Apart: Accessible Web 2.0 Applications with WAI-ARIA

In this post

• Jesse James Garrett
• Molly Holzschlag
• Mark Boulton
• Jon Hicks
• Hannah Donovan
• Shawn Lawton Henry
• Richard Ishida
• Andy Clarke

First off was Jesse James Garrett, the creator of the term AJAX, who held a keynote presentation with all the usual quotes, big stock photos, historical references to technical pioneers (this time the inventor of the Kodak film roll) and such (podcast). I’m afraid I can’t bear victorian black and white photos of technical pioneers in the context of web development any longer. OK, so this guy changed the way photos were made in 1885. Also web applications are a little more convenient now than server roundtrips. But where’s the common element? One made photography easier for the mainstream, the other is a much hyped technique with the potential to make things easier, but quite often people just blow it.

Don’t believe the hype. Most web applications still don’t innovate, they just copy desktop behavior. And who is really comfortable with the restrictions of desktop software anyway? If it’s only a matter of response rates, learn from Yahoo! how to minimize the amount of data being sent on server requests. If I can update a whole page in 1-2 seconds using smart caching and other techniques, there’s no need for an AJAX request except for immediate form feedback helping users to avoid errors. Film rolls have faded from the face of Earth, it really would be more interesting what’s next, after AJAX. Jesse talked about user-centered design, cited Tim O’Reilly with the paradigm to “design from the outside in.” But that only means: after having taken one usability step back, eventually we will move forward. Where to? Jesse failed to deliver that.

A key factor to understand why browsers are such a pain is to remind yourself that they are just a piece of software, said Molly Holzschlag, now working for Microsoft (podcast). In fact very complex software. She compared the pros and cons of different browsers and what we can learn from them: short iteration circles and automated updates from Firefox, a strong brand and user identification from Opera. Otherwise she recommended that if you really need a feature in IE, make yourself heard. Put pressure on Microsoft to get priority. Just telling them you “want” something like multiple background images or WAI ARIA support won’t be enough. Your voice and your friends’ might weight more than that of the W3C, because you are their customers, their userbase.

Mark Boulton’s presentation about typography gained more momentum after a while (podcast). He explained why Verdana is lighter than Arial, and that you should blur your design to identify the optical gray gradient of a page. Then he continued to talk on grids and how to design to a vertical rhythm, a topic well known from print but rather unrecognized in web design until last year. Quite fashionable are headlines in a serif font for a better structure, and paying attention to small details like using the correct quotation marks or dashes can make a difference.

Jon Hicks showed us how to be a creative leech sponge (podcast). Get your inspiration everywhere — with two exceptions. Do sketches, keep those you draw during phone calls, take photos of typefaces, keep photos gone bad just for the color effects, collect labels from clothes, get leaflets (the “all you can eat buffet for designers”; get even the bad as you might need to mimic bad design some day). Get inspiration from book covers, graphic novels, books for children, magazines, patterns, prints, or packaging design. Blogs and flickr groups also help you to get inspiration, delivered right to your desktop through their RSS feed. The two exceptions? Other websites and logos, because there’s a high risk you will come up with a copy instead of an original idea. They are too close to the desired product so there’s no room for creative transformation.

Once you have collected inspirational material, it needs to be cataloged. That can be done in a sketchbook, but iPhoto, Yojimbo, or flickr will do the job.

Catalysts against a creative block (the dreaded blank page) can be deadlines, changing your environment and going for a walk or drive, going to bed, some peace and quietness (in the bathroom, where you keep the magazines for inspiration), taking a shower, or traditional techniques like brainstorming, mindmapping, criticizing and learning from bad examples, or moodboards. If your clients are adventurous enough, they can even do their own.

Some people are angry about Last FM’s sell-out to CBS, but Hannah Donovan didn’t make the impression that a petty-minded corporate spirit has taken over (yet). She talked about lessons you learn in a startup, like getting started, getting out the product very quickly (before others do it), taking small iteration steps with the rapid development technique Scrum, and using broad brushstrokes as a designer. Perfectionism is no priority for startups. Also she recommended that designers and developers work on a team (really) and hold 5 minute stand-up meetings every morning, “that makes a world of difference.” That actually means sharing a room, you know.

Shawn Lawton Henry works for the W3C WAI and the MIT, naturally she talked about accessibility (podcast). That’s something most people take as “what you can get away with,” but it’s really about people. So it’s important to understand how people with disabilities use the web. Technical standards like the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 2.0 (WCAG) only supply a shared definition of requirements. Because they are not going to change for a while you better take the time to review the current version. However, the WCAG Techniques document will be adaptable and more flexible. There will be subversions, and although there’s no issue tracker at the moment, you will be able to submit additional techniques to meet the WCAG requirements as they are intended to grow with time.

I didn’t take notes on Richard Ishida’s presentation about I18N because I was familiar with the slides already, but I was deeply impressed by this man (podcast). Richard lives and breathes internationalization. He speaks about a dozen languages and doesn’t let a chance pass to practice them. He is the perfect personification as head of W3C I18N activity. I only wish he had said a few things about the I18N tag set because it’s a mighty tool for translations and fairly new.

On a related subject Andy Clarke asked designers worldwide if they thought their country or region got a distinctive design style, and he compared international websites of global players (podcast). While most of them just work, they could do better by adapting to the local customs and style. Culturalization is the key, anything else is modern imperialism. Check his presentation (PDF, 18 MB).

Somehow it was different than last year. Of course I came home full of inspiration, but this time it was more like deepening knowledge, while last year for example the concepts of microformats or browser performance were totally new for me. I met more people than in 2006, and I feel some of them can become my friends. That’s a new experience at a conference. I even found some parallels with Joe Clark. No, I’m not a “sarcastic gay vegan,” but we both don’t drink, prefer tea, and can be quite pedantic… I even linked to his website without rel=nofollow now, what an improvement! Anyway, I’m looking forward to meet some of my new friends in Brighton at d.construct.

The first model is rather technical. There are checklists for the criteria of WCAG 1.0, sometimes with a detailed discussion why and how something is tested. Tests can be automated or conducted by experts. Still there is no guarantee that passing the tests will result in accessible, easy to use websites. This approach is output-driven, but not tested with real users. The complex nature of the tests make them incomprehensible for clients who have to rely on the claims of their agency.

Examples for a technical approach are the German Federal Ordinance on Barrier-Free Information Technology (BITV), the French General Reference for Accessibility of Administrations (RGAA), or the European Unified Web Evaluation Methodology (UWEM).

The second generation is user-centered. Web development is a process, and in the end there should be an accessible website that does the job: users can find information, accomplish a task, buy stuff. This is contextual accessibility. Besides expert reviews and conformance inspections this approach involves testing with disabled users to provide evidence for accessible sites. Often these accessibility laws go beyond WCAG and recommend best practices, demand accessible authoring tools according to ATAG, or provide considerations for choosing a content management system.

Examples for contextual and holistic accessibility laws are the British Guide to Good Practice in Commissioning Accessible Websites (PAS 78; PDF, 906 KB), the Guidelines for Swedish Public Sector Web Sites, or the Dutch Web Guidelines.

In their paper about Accessibility 2.0, Kelly et al. pointed out a few other flaws of the WCAG approach. For example the guidelines should be the result of a transparent, evidence based process. Therefore we need more research like that of the German Aktion Mensch, a study about the accessibility of Web 2.0 applications. Automation should be de-emphasized. Accessibility as the ultimate goal for users should be acknowledged, also the role of context and the relevance of diversity. We need to develop best practices and make sure they find their way into education. A new WCAG version is a chance to bring contextual accessibility into legislation, standards, and policies.

I will address that in a Web Standards Project meeting tomorrow in London. What are your suggestions? Are you familiar with the details of the Dutch or Swedish guidelines? How about the accessibility laws in your country? Are they technical or contextual? Who is involved in creating those policies? Kelly’s paper lists a lot of publications about disabled users — are your aware of any others?

Speakers

• Richard Schwerdtfeger (IBM)
• Marian Oosting (anderslezen.nl)
• Chris Heilmann (Yahoo!)
• Miguel González-Sancho (European Commission)
• Michael Cooper (W3C WAI)
• Dominique Hazaël-Massieux (W3C Mobile Web Initiative)
• Dave Wilton (Legal & General)

Richard Schwerdtfeger works for IBM and is a member of the W3C WAI and the HTML working group, among others. I assume he had been invited because the organizers only knew him for having developed IBM Home Page Reader back in the 1990ies. But his current work involves the W3C working drafts for Accessible Rich Internet Applications (ARIA) and other core technologies that his team developed in cooperation with vendors of Assistive Technologies (AT, e.g. screen readers) and the Mozilla Foundation.

There’s a paradigm shift in the usability and accessibility of Web 2.0 applications. ARIA adds meaning, importance, relationships, fills the gaps in (X)HTML, and increases usability for all users through familiar navigation models from desktop applications.

From Marian Oosting (anderslezen.nl) I learned about DAISY. It’s a library standard mostly used for talking books for the blind. Based on MP3 and the W3C XML standard SMIL, it combines strong compression with superior navigational features. Quite intriguing to use that format for audio books, and since 2006 it’s becoming available and more attractive for non-disabled users. For example, talking books are quite popular with elderly people who constitute about 60-80% of public library users.

In his presentation Chris Heilmann (Yahoo!) emphasized the need to ask people with impairments because they use assistive technologies in other ways than a non-disabled developer might foresee. Don’t assume, integrate their advice!

Miguel González-Sancho (European Commission, Information Society Directorate General) presented the European programs for e-Accessibility, e-Aging, and e-Inclusion. ICT is becoming essential for socio-economic participation, yet 40% of the European population is left behind. Functional limitations and disabilities increase due to aging. About 20% or 100 million of the European population is concerned. Thus accessibility is gaining relevance and becomes a social imperative.

In “Web Accessibility in the Future” Michael Cooper (W3C WAI) was rather giving the big picture and avoided to announce a release date for WCAG 2.0. Although the updated version will definitely play an important role in the future of accessibility, so does the development of a common Accessibility API or authoring interfaces that generate accessible content (ATAG). Think of user contributed content where the authors are usually unaware of accessibility requirements. Moreover, professionalization of accessible design, programming, and manual and semi-automated evaluation will gain importance. We must keep an open eye on developing technologies (MathML?, Second Life?), advocate accessibility in early stages, and keep accessibility awareness in legislation and society.

Dominique Hazaël-Massieux (W3C Mobile Web Initiative) talked about the mobile web, of course. There are more mobile phones than computers, they are cheap, and about 80% of the world population has mobile network coverage. Mobile access is everywhere, will become ubiquitous. There are some limitations like the tiny screen, the lack of a proper keyboard, diversity is large and access slow. In fact mobile and impaired users have so many challenges in common that Dominique estimates an accessible website already meets half the requirements of the Mobile Web Best Practices. Bad news for militant accessibility advocates who keep emphasizing the differences between accessibility, universal access and device independence.

Dave Wilton from the large British financial services supplier Legal & General gave some real world examples why it literally pays to become accessible:

There are nine million people with disabilities in the UK. If 1% just bought a £300 policy, his company will make £27 million: “The cost of making the site accessible pales into insignificance.” If people can’t buy from Legal & General, they will go to their competitors. In surveys, helpdesk and logfile analyses they found 10% of their visitors don’t make it past the home page. That’s equivalent to slamming the door into the faces of 20,000 visitors each month. 30% never open a PDF file. Besides, every third Briton is older than 50, and as we have heard before, the incidence of disabilities increase with age. There are not only people with cognitive impairments, but also 3 million people who speak English as a second language, 1.5 million people lacking basic language skills, and 5.2 million adults who have sub-GCSE level English.

Next time somebody tells you “disabled people are not our target group” show ‘em these results:

• Online traffic surged with a 50% increase in natural search engine listings.
• The number of visitors receiving quotes increased by 100% within three months.
• The new content management system cut site maintenance costs by 66% with an annual saving of £200k.
• Without changing products or prices, conversion rates improved substantially, ranging between 26% and 300% increase with an average of 200% (something Jakob Nielsen seconds).
• The entire project delivered 100% return-on-investment (ROI) within just 12 months.
• Customer satisfaction was improved (not one accessibility complaint!)
• It was great PR!

1. The geek meeting in Frankfurt known as Webmontag will be held for the seventh time at the Brotfabrik. So far there are short lectures about a social photosharing network, semantic webworking P2P transactions, and a wireless match maker, but you are free to present your own work and research.

   After all, this is an informal meeting organized through a Wiki where you can participate and share your knowledge. Not necessarily technical knowledge, also designers, project managers, and information architects have been spotted — I wish they would speak up more often. Admission is free, so if you are in the Frankfurt area you have no excuse not to attend.

2. The second conference almost slipped my radar: it’s the First European e-Accessibility Forum in Paris, organized by the French accessibility entity BrailleNet and EDeAN (European Design for All e-Accessibility Network). While I can’t say much about BrailleNet, EDeAN is the official accessibility outreach organization of the EU. So far they have kept a low profile doing politics and research in the background, but it’s about time more people learn about their existence.

   For only € 90 you get a day packed with high quality accessibility information from industry leaders: Microsoft’s French Technical Director speaks about accessibility in the Web 2.0 context. IBMs Rich Schwerdtfeger, member of both the WAI Protocols and Formats Working Group and the HTML Working Group, is next with accessible rich internet applications (ARIA). Among other speakers, there will be Christian Heilmann (Yahoo!), Michael Cooper (W3C / WAI), Steven Faulkner (developer of the Web Accessibility Toolbar), Dave Wilton (Legal & General, the insurance company that got best practice credits in the UK’s PAS 78), Julie Howell (former accessibility champion of the Royal National Institute of the Blind), Dominique Hazaël-Massieux (W3C), and Miguel González-Sancho (European Commission). They will talk about accessibility and the Mobile Web, the UbiWeb, harmonization of European accessibility and a European label, or present a couple of case studies from print, banking, and job websites.

   You better be fast for that one, registration is only open until Saturday, January 20th.

3. Last but not least the website for the @media conference has been updated yesterday, so you can register for the event in London, June 7th and 8th, or earlier in Asia and the US. Last year’s event was fun and inspirational, so start fast-talking your employer now!

• Introduction
• Differences between WCAG 1 and WCAG 2
• What’s wrong with WCAG 2?
• Discussion
• Conclusion

Introduction

His article “To Hell with WCAG 2” was an eye-opener. Joe Clark expressed his angriness about the W3C, its slow, lobby-driven, bureaucratic processes, the gruelling internal fights within working groups and the Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI) in particular. The WCAG 2.0 Working Draft was a disappointment, basically unreadable, impossible to understand, and failing in major issues after five years in the making (WCAG 1 took a little longer than two years to become a finalized standard).

At that time I hadn’t read WCAG 2 yet. Joe Clark’s passionate article was a revelation, and all the blogs I read agreed with him. Perhaps I wasn’t the only one who hadn’t read the working draft by then. Because now I have, and while there are some valid points in his inflammatory speech, there are also major flaws.

Did you know that, contrary to Joe Clark’s beliefs, validating code is a requirement? That semantic markup is enforced? Other issues are totally overrated, like claiming a decent tab order was equal to the “prohibition of CSS layouts.” But more on that later.

His assault on the W3C set a spark to the tinderbox, and suddenly we heard concerns confirming the bad state of the Consortium from respected celebs like Jeffrey Zeldmann, Molly Holzschlag, Eric Meyer, Björn Höhrmann, and Tim Berners-Lee, to name a few.

Clark’s public criticism might be seen as a bold and important step. However, actually calling group members “arrogant and ignorant,” hanging up during conference calls and allegations like “some teenagers have greater understanding of valid, semantic markup than the Working Group” (ibid.) hurts the cause. If you search the WAI mailing list for more contributions from Joe Clark, you will immediately notice his egocentric, cynical, and often insulting style. He criticizes ignorance and harassment within that working group, but he’s part of the problem.

Meanwhile some things seem to go right at the W3C: the I18N activity led by Richard Ishida, or the quick embracing of Microformats, Web Forms, Widgets and Gadgets, and the XHTML 1.1 Role Attribute Module.

The latter has to be seen in context with IBM’s contribution to the Mozilla source code for DHTML accessibility. To implement that important technique, IBM has proposed an extension of the HTML specification to allow a negative tabindex. Joe Clark overstates that simple extension as “IBM actively promoting a DHTML technique that breaks the HTML specification.”

Differences between WCAG 1 and WCAG 2

WCAG 2 introduces four basic principles of accessibility. Content must be POUR:

1. Perceivable
2. Operable
3. Understandable
4. Robust

The guidelines are organized around these four principles, and checkpoints for the guidelines are now called success criteria. Each success criterion comes with an extended commentary, techniques to meet the guidelines, and common failures. That’s more comprehensive than version 1 and leaves less room for ambiguity.

The success criteria for each guideline are organized into three levels, though not all guidelines contain success criteria at every level. Levels are like WCAG 1 priorities, but they are more precise. WCAG 1 checkpoints had only one priority allocated, while a success criterion with multiple levels can be more differentiated.

In the past programming a website to conform to level triple-A was an almost impossible and disproportionate effort. Besides guidelines always have room for interpretation, so it is possible that experts disagree if a criterion has been met. Therefore the working group was pragmatic enough to grant triple-A conformance if at least 50% of all level 3 criteria are fulfilled.

Techniques for a website are defined in a public baseline, like “the specification that this content relies upon is: XHTML 1.0 (Strict). The specifications that this content uses but does not rely on are: JavaScript 1.2, CSS 2.” You can specify any reasonable technique, there’s no longer a preference for W3C techniques — if Flash is accessible enough and sufficient for the job, you don’t have to use SMIL. More on the baseline concept later. In the same way your conformance claims and conformance scope are published.

Since the working group tried to be as generic as possible, some terms changed. They speak of “web units” instead of “pages”, because web units include things like Ajax applications, which wouldn’t be covered by the term “page.” You get used to the terms fairly quick.

The guidelines were extended to be less ambiguous and include more cases. Deeply hidden within the documents are some true gems, for example accessible CAPTCHA or accessible Ajax. Wonderful!

What’s wrong with WCAG 2?

The information is yet too scattered among different documents, which makes it hard to read and comprehend. However, the working group notes it’s still work in progress, and they want to create separate files for each success criterion as well as a navigation structure. That sounds like the commented German accessibility guidelines, so I’m positive that the end-result will be more usable.

I must admit it could also be more readable. A professional copywriter could help, but I can imagine the exact wording of each success criterion was probably a big issue in WAI meetings, so the stakeholders won’t give up so easily just for enhanced readability.

Speaking of comprehension and easy reading, severe flaws can be found in the cognitive department. “Making text content readable and understandable” is a joke. Guidelines for context and orientation, navigation, and comprehension have been more or less dropped since WCAG 1.

We’ve come a long way to understand these features are not for cognitively challenged people alone, but they are basic requirements for all of us. Young people with insufficient reading skills, elderly who are new to the Internet — we all benefit from features like breadcrumb paths, a consistent navigation with clear wording, well written text, or relevant search results. These guidelines spell usability! We can’t allow having them removed!

Discussion

His article raised critical awareness for the last-call W3C working draft, which lead to the extension of the comments period. Still the degree of concern and fear didn’t need to be raised. Many issues are exaggerated, distorted by omission, or plain wrong. Let’s discuss them in detail:

1. 1. Definitions of “page” and “site”

   Exactly what a “page” is, let alone a “site,” will be a matter of dispute.

   Agreed. Although everybody knows what these terms mean, a formal definition is missing. But there are more important issues. That’s a typical Joe Clark.

2. 2. Valid (X)HTML

   A future website that complies with WCAG 2 won’t need valid HTML — at all, ever. (More on that later.) You will, however, have to check the DOM outputs of your site in multiple browsers and prove they’re identical.

   Not true. Success criterion 4.1.1 in plain English demands that IDs must be unique and elements properly nested. One technique to ensure that is validation. How was it possible that Joe Clark missed such an important point? Had he actually read his printouts, or was he just summarizing his correspondence with the working group?

   However, it is true that a comparison of DOM outputs is seen as an alternative technique to ensure proper nesting or well-formedness. That won’t work. Even valid code doesn’t result in identical DOM outputs in multiple browsers. Take for example line-breaks and code indented with tabs (white-space): Mozilla counts these as text-nodes, while IE ignores them in the DOM tree. Besides it would be a tremendous effort to compare the trees manually. Would somebody please create a validation tool with different browser engines under the hood?

3. 3. Table layout

   You can still use tables for layout. (And not just a table — tables for layout, plural.)

   Of course we know the disadvantages of table layout, and they are a pain to every standardista. From a pure accessibility standpoint they are tolerable as long as they can be linearized and semantic markup like <th> isn’t misused. But speaking semantically, isn’t a <td> supposed to represent tabular data?

4. 4. Blinking elements

   Your page, or any part of it, may blink for up to three seconds. Parts of it may not, however, “flash.”

   Everybody hates the infamous blink tag because it makes text unreadable. But I don’t think that’s what they are speaking of. It’s more like in banner ads, or in Ajax notifications. For three seconds I can live with that. The difference between blinking and flashing is the frequency; the latter can result in epileptic seizures. Simply avoid anything between three and fifty flashes per second.

5. 5. Baseline technologies

   You’ll be able to define entire technologies as a “baseline,” meaning anyone without that technology has little, if any, recourse to complain that your site is inaccessible to them.

   Not true. Baselines have to be reasonable. If they are not reasonable, others, including your government, can set a baseline.

   There are a couple of examples for reasonable baselines, like “only technologies that have been widely supported by more than one accessible and affordable user agent for more than one release” for a government site. More examples can be found in the …

6. 6. Conformance claims

   If you wish to claim WCAG 2 compliance, you must publish a checklist of declarations more reminiscent of a forced confession than any of the accessibility policies typically found today.

   Hmm, which of the following do you think is clearer?

   1. 

   2. On 5 May 2006, “G7: An Introduction” http://telcor.example.com/nav/G7/intro.html conforms to W3C’s WCAG 2 Conformance Level Double-A. The following additional success criteria have also been met: 1.1.2, 1.2.5, and 1.4.3. The baseline for this claim is UDBaseline#1-2006 at http://UDLabs.org/baselines#1-2006.html. The specification that this content “relies upon” is: XHTML 1.0 (Strict), and Real Video. The specifications that this content “uses but does not rely on” are: JavaScript 1.2, CSS 2.

   My vote goes for the WCAG 2 conformance claim. Include this elegantly as a RDF file within a <link> (something missing in this working draft), and I’m a happy developer.

7. 7. Conformance scope

   You’ll be able to define entire directories of your site as off-limits to accessibility (including, in WCAG 2’s own example, all your freestanding videos).

   That’s true. But you can’t exclude integral parts of a process, like parts of a shop, though further definition would be required which parts can be excluded and which can’t. It becomes clearer when you take an example where the scope is set with a date:

   Materials with creation or modification dates before 31 December 2006 conform to WCAG 1.0 Level Double-A. Materials with creation or modification dates after 31 December 2006 conform to WCAG 2.0 Level Double-A.

   I can imagine cases where new content does conform to WCAG 2, while nobody bothers to touch really old content somewhere deep in the archives. So scoping is a practical issue: rather have conformance for the new and important parts than none at all.

8. 8. Video

   Not that anybody ever made them accessible, but if you post videos online, you no longer have to provide audio descriptions for the blind at the lowest “conformance” level. And only prerecorded videos require captions at that level.

   Joe Clark was dubbed the king of closed captions, so from his point of view WCAG 2 must be a step backwards: audio descriptions for prerecorded video are required on level 2, on level 1 either audio descriptions or a transcript will be sufficient. Audio descriptions for live video content were dropped in November 2005, and captions for live videos are level 2.

   WCAG 1 was very vague and didn’t make distinctions between live and prerecorded video. Everything had to have audio descriptions on the lowest level. The WCAG 2 approach doesn’t go that far. Although this might be disappointing, it is more differentiated and more reasonable.

9. 9. Audio

   Your podcasts may have to be remixed so that dialogue is 20 decibels louder than lengthy background noise. (You don’t have to caption or transcribe them, since they aren’t “multimedia” anymore. […]

   I agree not many people have the equipment to correctly measure a difference of 20 dB(A), but as a rule of thumb any dialogue should be easy to understand. Having my own program on a free radio station I can dig that. But there’s another major point Joe misses: although technically audio only is not multimedia, it still has to be transcribed.

10. 10. Skip links

    You can put a few hundred navigation links on a single page and do nothing more, but if you have two pages together that have three navigation links each, you must provide a way to skip navigation.

    Skip links are good, I don’t mind to have them everywhere. But in WCAG 1 “a few hundred navigation links” would have been required to be structured with subheadlines to enhance understanding. That’s the real issue here!

11. 11. Offscreen positioning

    You can’t use offscreen positioning to add labels (e.g., to forms) that only some people, like users of assistive technology, can perceive. Everybody has to see them.

    Although the intent of that criterion clearly is to make structure available to screen readers through semantic markup, the sentence Joe Clark refers to could be interpreted the way he does. Here’s the original:

    The purpose of this success criterion is to ensure that when such relationships are perceivable to one set of users, those relationships can be made to be perceivable to all.

    That’s not really new. Think of zoom readers with tab navigation via keyboard. If you place content offscreen, it can be quite irritating if an element gains focus and still is not visible. Good practice would require at least changing the element’s position to a visible area when it gets :focus. Although labeling forms, like in Joe’s example, can be achieved without offscreen positioning since the title attribute is deemed sufficient.

12. 12. Tab source order

    CSS layouts, particularly those with absolutely-positioned elements that are removed from the document flow, may simply be prohibited at the highest level. In fact, source order must match presentation order even at the lowest level.

    Death to any order columns! Death to the Holy Grail! I can understand the feelings some have towards that, but again it’s nothing new. In fact, in Germany’s eAccessibility law it was implemented as a priority 2 feature, not 3. The tab navigation shouldn’t be irritating and jump across the page, so take care of your source order.

13. 13. Idioms, acronyms, and pronounciation

    Also at the highest level, you have to provide a way to find all of the following:

    1. Definitions of idioms and “jargon”
    2. Expansion of acronyms
    3. Pronunciations of some words

    While for English developers marking-up foreign-language passages might be an exception with an unusual amount of “fanatical care” to achieve this, people in countries like Japan or Germany, where you have many anglicisms especially in technical texts, had a long time to get accustomed to it.

    In fact, according to WCAG 1 any language changes had to be identified as a priority 1 requirement, while in WCAG 2 only the document’s primary language is level 1, and only passages or phrases within the text are level 2, not single words. This is an incredible work reduction. Considering screen readers make a subtle pause before language switches that can get annoying in texts with many foreign words, it is also an improvement for those users.

14. 14. Alternate documents

    You also have to provide an alternate document if a reader with a “lower secondary education level” couldn’t understand your main document. (In fact, WCAG 2 repeatedly proposes maintaining separate accessible and inaccessible pages. In some cases, you don’t necessarily have to improve your inaccessible pages as long as you produce another page.)

    Again, that’s an old friend, and it’s emphasized that an alternate version “is a fallback option and is not preferable to making the content itself accessible.” So what? If a technical document for a specific target audience can’t use very simple language, it is common to provide a text summary for people with lower reading skills. That doesn’t mean we forget about accessibility and start publishing nothing but alternate text versions again.

Conclusion

Joe Clark takes some points, but on a closer look his article leaves a bitter taste as another tool for enforcing his point of view on the Web Content Accessibility Working Group. Okay, probably most of us who care about web standards today have been nerds as teenagers. But then again most of us have quit playing Dungeons and Dragons and got some social life. We don’t spend hours in front of our TV and write angry nitpicking letters to the CBC. We don’t harass W3C working groups, and when they won’t be intimidated, we do not found our own. Be gentle and play with the other kids.

If you want reform then do it from the inside — the subtlety of subversion is more effective than revolution.

Comment on Eric Meyer’s blog

WCAG 2 is not so spoiled, there’s still plenty of opportunity to make your constructive critique heard until the working draft becomes a recommendation.

Thanks to the Frankfurt Webmontag for the inspiration to write down and extend the things I mentioned in my lecture about WCAG 2 on 14 August 2006.