JavaScript and WCAG2.0 progress
By Mike Davies | July 18th, 2005 | Filed in Accessibility, DOM, DOM Scripting TF
The Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (or WCAG) is a series of pointers and tips on making web content accessible to people with disabilities (with a useful side-effect of making the content more accessible to practically all devices). JavaScript has a bigger profile within the current WCAG2.0 work.
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The Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (or WCAG) is a series of pointers and tips on making web content accessible to people with disabilities (with a useful side-effect of making the content more accessible to practically all devices).
JavaScript has a bigger profile within the current WCAG2.0 work. The original scope of WCAG2.0 includes a JavaScript techniques document (referring to it as ECMAScript). This is a far better sign than the current WCAG, which effectively bans all use of JavaScript (since it is not a W3C technology).
Things looked interesting in June 2004 when Matt May (then a W3C employee working on, amongst other things, the WCAG2.0 guidelines) called out for JavaScript developers to contribute to the Client-scripting Techniques Document. JavaScript and accessibility are not mortal enemies.
A year later, and the WCAG2.0 Working Group looks to have taken a step backwards, deciding instead to produce a techniques document that talks about concepts, rather than providing practical working code examples. The main argument is that the length of code samples would turn the techniques document into a programming manual.
No working code in a techniques document. Because it would be too long, and buggy. Instead we’ll have a high-level hand-waving document. This falls short of a resource accessible website developers can turn to.