Joe Clark, respected Web Accessibility guru, author of Building Accessible Websites, is criticising the draft version of the new Web Content Accessibility Guidelines which has been under development for over 5 years now.
Clark doesn’t just criticise the content of the new guidelines, but the manner in which they have been delivered to the world and how valuable stakeholders haven’t been listened to or even consulted.
What does this mean? A lot of the work of WCAG1 — the things that actually work — seems to be being undone and losing a lot of it’s punch. And instead, most of what WCAG2 is proposing Joe claims to be unachievable — and he’d know.
I could start explaining, but you’re better off reading what Joe Clark had to say his A List Apart article.
The WAI committee didn’t give much time for interested parties to provide comments — only until 31st May 2006. You better read this now and provide your feedback to the group while you still can.
UPDATE: Corrected some mistakes — thanks Joe Clark for dropping by and correcting me 😉
You meant Building Accessible Websites and 31st May 2006.
On 26 May, the deadline for comments was extended to 22 June (http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/w3c-wai-ig/2006AprJun/0083.html).
By the way, Joe Clark is wrong about a few things, as some commenters on his article have pointed out.
On 26 May, the deadline for comments on WCAG 2.0 was extended to 22 June.