Edit comment LC-635 for Accessibility Guidelines Working Group

Quick access to

Previous: LC-639 Next: LC-742

Comment LC-635: Comment Shortname:; Commenter: Lisa Seeman 1 <lisa@ubaccess.com> on behalf of Invited expert at W3C, UB access; Message-id:; Section of the document concerned:

or; Refinement of the section concerned:; Status:
assigned to; Type:; Resolution status:
Response drafted Resolution implemented Reply sent to commenter; Response status:
No response from Commenter yet Commenter approved disposition Commenter objected to disposition
Commenter's response (URI):; Comment:
http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-comments-wcag20/2006May/0137.html
http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-comments-wcag20/2006May/att-0137/wcagform_ch_1html.html

Comment (including rationale for proposed change):

With new technology such as roles within the WAI, you can assign the role of the object in a programmatically understandable way. Also you can use RDF, xfroms etc to similar affect.

Proposed Change:

1.3.2 Any information that is conveyed by color can be programmatically determined or is also visually evident without color; Related issues: 558
(space separated ids); WG Notes: [TEAMC] [HOLD] While there is support in Xforms and with Dynamic Web Content Accessibility,k I don't think these are well enough supported to add "programmatically determined" back into the Success criteria. As we have discussed in the past, the style information to assign a color can be programmatically determined. In discussions to this point, the WG does not feel that programmatically determined is sufficient since it is not well supported by assistive technology. I have drafted a technique about using the required attribute that could be tweaked to fit this SC about color. Currently the technique uses an asterisk and required=true to mark a required field - it could be modified to use color and required=true to better fit this SC. I haven't drafted a response because we need to work out the "programmatically determined" issue with this SC. This belongs to a group of comments about color variations etc. [Becky] I have thought about this more and I think that we actually CAN change the SC. It is not stating the the COLOR can be programmatically determined but that the INFORMATION is programmatically determined. So, just knowing that an item is a particular color does not give you the information that it is required . Reword SC 1.3.2 as Any information that is conveyed by color is visually evident without color or the information can be programmatically determined. Add a failure. Failure due to conveying information via text color alone. The failure would be a form that has the instructions, "Required fields are labeled with red text". With the explanation that even though a user agent or assistive technology can programmatically determine that text label for a field is in a particular color, this SC requires that the user be able to obtain the information about the field - that it is required. I also think that this would prevent the recently added sufficient technique that you can use color AND text variation. That should also fail. Once Dynamic Web Content Accessibility is approved as a spec - the recently approved advisory technique for 1.3.1 about using the required property could become sufficient without the addition of the asterisk character. Although this is still a bit tricky - I don't know how we expect a user agent to indicate that a field is required other than via a visual means? I guess it depends upon how forward looking we want to be? Currenlty the only way to programmtically determine that a field is required (as the most common example of information conveyed by text color) is via Dynamic Web content Accessibility. Discussed in the 25 January 2007 telecon: Resolution: Accept 635 as amended. http://www.w3.org/WAI/GL/2007/01/25-wai-wcag-minutes.html Color is a variation in the presentation of text. Since we agreed at the October 2006 that information conveyed by variations in the presentation of text must be programmatically determiniable per 1.3.1, then it seems we can close this with no change.; Resolution: Information conveyed through variations in the presentation must be programmatically determinable in order to conform to SC 1.3.1. Since color is a variation in presentation, any information conveyed by variations in color must be programmatically determinable. Thus a change to SC 1.3.2 is not needed.; (Please make sure the resolution is adapted for public consumption)