Request for Cross-Disability Review of WAI Guidelines

Last updated December 31, 1998

Judy Brewer, W3C/WAI Domain Leader

We invite your review of WAI guidelines

(NOTE: Deadline for comments extended to January 22, 1999)

The Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI) is an activity hosted by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) to make the Web accessible for people with disabilities. The W3C is a vendor-neutral industry consortium that develops the technologies (HTML, HTTP, etc.) that the Web runs on. The WAI coordinates with the W3C's technical working groups to make sure all the W3C's specifications support accessibility. The WAI also produces guidelines which promote Web accessibility.

The WAI has three sets of accessibility guidelines so far. All of them are in Working Draft status as of late December, 1998. Two of these will go as "Proposed Recommendations" to W3C Member Organizations within the next month or two. All three guidelines have been developed with input from industry, disability organizations, research organizations, and government.

Among disability organizations that have contributed to guidelines development, the strongest involvement has been from the blindness community, but there has also been some involvement from individuals or organizations with experience in different hearing, physical, or cognitive disabilities. We would like your feedback!

Have we adequately addressed the barriers that you find when accessing the Web? For instance:

do the guidelines capture access strategies needed for people using voice input, mouthstick, single-switch access, eyegaze, etc.?
do the guidelines reflect access requirements of people who have difficulty understanding or navigating through a lot of text, or remembering where they are in a document?
are there other issues which affect access to the Web for people with hearing, physical or cognitive disabilities, and are not already adequately reflected in the documents?

How to give input

The next several weeks are an important time for feedback. If you are interested in giving feedback, here's what to do:

Familiarize yourself at least briefly with the Web Accessibility Initiative and with W3C, our host.

note that there are three different kinds of guidelines: for content ("authoring"), for browsers ("user agent") and for editing ("authoring tools")
remember that each of the guidelines addresses a different part of the puzzle, and they all work together.
note that there is a whole other area of work -- education and outreach -- which is developing training materials, reference materials, explanations of why accessibility is needed, etc., so that doesn't all have to go into each guideline.

Pick one or more sets of guidelines to review. You can mention if you are reviewing them from a specific perspective -- for instance, cognitive or learning disabilities, deaf or hard-of-hearing users, (please note that the vocabulary for different disabilities varies from country to country, so in some cases you may want to explain disability terminology you're using).
Review the guidelines, and send your review comments to the appropriate list for that guideline's Working Group. Include in your comments the date/version that you are commenting on. Note the different deadlines for comments.
If you want to get more involved in WAI work, check out additional group information on the home pages for the guidelines groups, and contact the Chair of the group you're interested in.
That's it! Thanks in advance for your feedback.

Page Author Guidelines

The WAI Page Author Guidelines describe how to write Web pages and sites so they are accessible to people with disabilities.

Deadline for comment: Tuesday, January 22, 1999, close of business US Eastern Standard Time.
Latest draft to review (note this version is more recent than what's available on the W3C Technical Reports page) <http://www.w3.org/WAI/GL/WD-WAI-PAGEAUTH.html>.
Note that there is an accompanying techniques document linked near the top of the guidelines draft, on which comment is also welcome.
Send your comments to the Page Author Guidelines Working Group (GLWG)at <w3c-wai-gl@w3.org>.
Page Author Guidelines Working Group mailing list archive. Do NOT feel you have to read everything in the archive before commenting.
Page Author Guidelines Working Group home page includes contact information for this working group's Chair.

User Agent Guidelines

The WAI User Agent Guidelines provide guidance to manufacturers of browsers, multimedia players, and assistive technologies used with browsers, on how to ensure that the user interface is accessible and usable by people with disabilities; that the user agent renders information accessibly; and that there is compatibility between the browsers and assistive technologies such as screen readers.

Deadline for comment: Tuesday, January 22, 1999, close of business US Eastern Standard Time.
Latest draft to review: <http://www.w3.org/TR/WD-WAI-USERAGENT/>.
Note that there is an accompanying techniques document linked near the top of the guidelines draft, on which comment is also welcome.
Send your comments to the User Agent Guidelines Working Group (UAWG)at <w3c-wai-ua@w3.org>.
UAWG mailing list archive. Do NOT feel you have to read everything in the archive before commenting.
UAWG home page includes contact information for this working group's Chair.

Authoring Tool Guidelines

The WAI Authoring Tool Guidelines provide guidance to manufacturers of authoring tools (for example, HTML editors & generators, conversion tools, and site management tools) on how to ensure that the user interface is accessible, and that accessibility awareness (prompting, alerts, help files, validation) is integrated throughout the tools.

Deadline for comment: January 22, 1999, close of business US Eastern Standard Time.
Latest draft to review: <http://www.w3.org/TR/WD-WAI-AUTOOLS/>.
Send your comments to the Authoring Tool Guidelines Working Group (AUWG)at <w3c-wai-au@w3.org>.
AUWG mailing list archive: Do NOT feel you have to read everything in the archive before commenting.
AUWG home page includes contact information for this working group's Chair.

Get involved

If after reviewing WAI work, you're interested in getting involved, here are several ways to do so:

Visit the WAI Interest Group home page, which is for general discussion of all of WAI's work.
Subscribe to the WAI Interest Group mailing list.
Learn more about the World Wide Web Consortium by visiting the W3C home page and the W3C Technical Reports page.
Request to join a WAI Working Group.
Review WAI Education & Outreach materials under development, and consider how you might use these in your own outreach.
Make sure the Web sites of organizations you work with are accessible, by using the Page Author Guidelines.
Add links to WAI, and to the latest public version of the Page Author Guidelines, from your site.
Make sure that browser and authoring tool manufacturers are aware of your interest in Web applications which support accessibility.

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