[Irl-dean] AAA Claim?

[Barry McMullin]

On Tue, 20 Feb 2007, brendan spillane wrote:

> It had not occurred to me that 11.1 referred to document conversion,
> as I have always assumed this was covered by 11.3. While I would agree
> that it is a good thing to use W3C technologies 'when they are
> available and appropriate', currently (to my knowledge) there is no
> W3C technology which has the same properties as pdf/doc regarding
> printability / portability, and offline readability (as previously
> discussed in the list)

Hi Brendan -

Many thanks for that clarification - it was certainly helpful.

I absolutely agree that PDF, in particular, has certain definite
advantages over (X)HTML+CSS for certain use cases, especially
printing.  Indeed, I advocate and use PDF frequently for that
very reason.

Conversely, for general "electronic" rendering (whether
on-screen, braille, speech etc.) (X)HTML+CSS is clearly
"available and appropriate", and, if it is properly used,
actually preferable to PDF or MS-Word.

So I would never want to present this as a question of *either*
PDF *or* (X)HTML+CSS.  They each have their role and, in many
cases (particularly for longer documents) providing both would be
my preferred option (and, as Brendan notes, providing multiple
alternative formats is specifically endorsed by checkpoint 11.3,
albeit at priority 3).

That all said, in my opinion at least, the fact that PDF (or
MS-Word etc.) might be preferred for *some* use cases does not,
in itself, mean that there should be some sort of "blanket
exemption" from checkpoint 11.1.  So I would never consider that
a resource presented *exclusively* in PDF or MS-Word format could
be considered as satisfying checkpoint 11.1, just because that
format works better than any W3C technology for printing (or
"portability" or whatever).  And, just to be clear, I do not
consider this as some kind of "technicality" or "mere compliance"
issue: it generally has direct and very tangible effects on
accessibility for users with a wide variety of disabilities; or,
to put it another way, I think it is absolutely proper and
appropriate that it should apply here at priority 2.

So I would say there is an important asymmetry here: a resource
that is provided exclusively in XHTML+CSS can meet 11.1 (and thus
possibly meet Double-A conformance); but, arguably, and depending
on the context, might not meet 11.3 (and thus might still fail
Triple-A conformance).  But a resource provided exclusively in
PDF or MS-Word format will not even meet 11.1 (and thus fail
Double-A conformance, quite independently of 11.3).

But, it's getting lonely up here on the soapbox. I'm not a W3C
spokesman. I'm not even a member of the WCAG working group. I'm
just one person trying to make sense of what WCAG 1.0, as
written, actually means. So I'd be very pleased to hear others
comment just on this one specific question of whether PDF and
MS-Word resources should be exempt from the application of
checkpoint 11.1 (or, for that matter, any other potentially
relevant checkpoints).

(I know that I've still left Brendan's original question - of the
*scoping* of WCAG conformance claims - hanging; and I would still
like to get back to it ... sometime ...)

Thanks - Barry.