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This is a W3C Working Draft produced by the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines Working Group (WCAG WG). It describes requirements for Checklists and Techniques described by the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 2.0 (WCAG 2.0). These requirements are related to but different from Requirements for WCAG 2.0 in that "Requirements for WCAG 2.0 Checklists and Techniques" specifies requirements for the technology-specific documents produced by the WCAG WG while "Requirements for WCAG 2.0" specifies general requirements for the general usability of documents produced by the WCAG WG. The Working Group encourages feedback about these requirements as well as participation in the development of WCAG 2.0 by people who have experience creating Web content that conforms to Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 1.0.
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This document has been produced as part of the W3C Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI). The goals of the WCAG WG are discussed in the Working Group charter. The WCAG WG is part of the WAI Technical Activity.
This document describes requirements for creating Checklists and Techniques for the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 2.0. It is a draft document that does not fully represent the consensus of the group at this time. Consensus is expected to be achieved shortly and work on creating the Techniques documents to proceed.
This is a draft document and may be updated, replaced, or obsoleted by other documents at any time. It is inappropriate to use W3C Working Drafts as reference material or to cite them as other than "work in progress". A list of current W3C Recommendations and other technical documents can be found at http://www.w3.org/TR/.
1 Introduction
2 Definitions
3 General Requirements
����3.1 Intended Uses
����3.2 Scope of Documents
����3.3 Structure
����3.4 Relation to WCAG 2.0
4 Techniques Requirements
5 Checklist Requirements
The Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 2.0 creates a technology-independent set of Web accessibility guidelines by providing a set of high-level guidelines, and providing technology-specific information in auxiliary documents that are more frequently updated and may be non-normative. This document sets forth requirements for providing those documents, as summarized in Priorities and Techniques. Specifically, this set of requirements fulfills WCAG 2.0 Requirements to provide technology-specific Checklists and technology-specific Application Information.
This document describes requirements both for the source files used to store techniques and for the documents that will be generated from the source files. The source files will likely only be viewed for editing purposes and will exist in the best format and organization that fulfills the requirements (i.e., they are not likely to be available in HTML for general use). From these sources files we intend to generate a variety of views (see A. Output Formats). Each view may have its own requirements. The two views currently under discussion are comprehensive Techniques (4. Techniques Requirements) and Checklists (5. Checklist Requirements).
Other W3C groups have expressed interest in using the schema that is developed. Developers of non-W3C technologies may use the schema to publish their own techniques documents that show how to use their technologies to conform to WCAG 2.0. Therefore, while the Techniques documents are specifically created to meet WCAG 2.0 requirements, the structure is intended to be generalizable to other working groups and technologies.
[Definition: Testable: Either Machine Testable or Reliably Human Testable.]
[Definition: Machine Testable: There is a known algorithm (regardless of whether that algorithm is known to be implemented in tools) that will determine, with complete reliability, whether the technique has been implemented or not. Probabilistic algorithms are not sufficient.]
[Definition: Reliably Human Testable: The technique can be tested by human inspection and it is believed that at least 80% of knowledgeable human evaluators would agree on the conclusion. The use of probabilistic machine algorithms may facilitate the human testing process but this does not make it machine testable.]
[Definition: Not Reliably Testable: The technique is subject to human inspection but it is not believed that at least 80% of knowledgeable human evaluators would agree on the conclusion.]
Techniques must be usable by a variety of audiences. Audiences that have been identified include
Source files must be structured in such a way that multiple views can be achieved. A list of specific views is provided in A. Output Formats. Some views may be targeted to specific audiences and other views may be appropriate for multiple audiences.
Techniques must be highly structured and largely machine manipulable. It is expected that they will exist in XML files conforming to the DTD/Schema in C. Techniques Schema.
Techniques documents must be versioned in such a way that updates to the documents do not break interdependencies that may exist among multiple documents (e.g., on Core techniques, HTML dependent on CSS, etc.). Versioning can be based on revision dates of specific documents.
Each technique must be assigned a unique identifier to enable machine-readable conformance statements.
Structure should be general enough that it can be used by groups outside the WAI domain.
It must be possible for Techniques documents to be localized.
It must be possible to provide techniques that are applicable to specific locales, but are not relevant in other locales.
The following points are mandatory requirements for Techniques.
Techniques related to Success Criteria must be testable. Guidance about testing methods may be provided.
Positive test cases must be provided for testable Techniques. Negative test cases should be provided when possible.
Techniques related to Additional Ideas should be testable when possible but may be not reliably testable. There must be a declaration of the testability of the Technique.
Example implementations or descriptions of implementations should be provided for untestable Techniques where possible.
Techniques should include descriptions, commentary, implementation notes, links to resources or training materials, etc. to contain information not part of the structured data.
The following points are mandatory requirements for Checklists.
Normally, a Checklist view will include content drawn from techniques for multiple technologies described as in 3.2. Scope of Documents. Each Success Criterion would be met by techniques drawn from one or more of the technologies but not necessarily all. For example, a Checklist describing HTML and CSS may indicate that some Success Criteria are met by HTML and others by CSS.
Each Success Criterion addressed in a Checklist must include a list of Checklist items that are both necessary and sufficient to meet that Success Criterion. If there are multiple interchangeable techniques which could be used to achieve a Success Criterion, they must be listed all together in a single Checklist item as an "OR" proposition.
Checklists must be constructed such that all items in the checklist for a given success criterion must be marked true in order for the content to be declared conformant at any conformance level.
If there are no techniques for a particular technology that address a specific success criterion, then a checklist item for that success criterion must be present and must include information stating that the content must also be provided in another form that meets all of Level 1 requirements.
Checklist items are grouped according to the Checkpoint to which they apply and are ordered by their conformance level (Minimum, Level 2, and Level 3). Optional techniques should be presented in an "additional strategies" section and listed separately.