WCAG Samurai Errata Released
The long-awaited WCAG Samurai Errata draft has now been published. Well, I’ve been waiting for it for some time and rushed off to read it immediately.
In the main, it’s excellent. It corrects many of the initial problems within WCAG 1.0 and some of the issues that have arisen because the guidelines now lag so far behind current technology. The approach is practical and pragmatic. The language is clear and simple. It calls a spade “a spade” and not “a horticulturalist’s earth re-positioning tool”. However, there were some points that either suprised or disappointed me.
The document begins by saying:
Special note about cognitive disabilities
These errata do not substantively correct WCAG 1’s provisions for cognitive disabilities. Compliance with WCAG+Samurai cannot be a claim of full accessibility to people with cognitive disabilities.”
The introduction page also states:
No new guidelines for cognitive disabilities: WCAG 1 and 2 are both inadequate to address the needs of people with cognitive disabilities like dyslexia (though that is only one of many such disabilities, which often have conflicting needs). We couldn’t bring ourselves to delete the only guideline below Priority 3 that attempts to address cognitive disabilities (“Use the clearest and simplest languageâ€), but we also haven’t devised a full suite of new guidelines. Nobody else has, either; it requires considerably more research and, importantly, user testing. Nor do we trust much of what we’ve read from alleged experts in the field. We are leaving WCAG 1 almost exactly as it is and, separately, we require that compliance with WCAG+Samurai cannot be a claim of full accessibility to people with cognitive disabilities.
That was the first suprise. Whilst I fully appreciate that the issues faced by people with cannot possibly be covered by this document alone, I was hoping to see some headway made in this direction. As it is, it seems that the document’s authors have decided to ignore the needs of this group and, as a result, some of the published errata are distinctly lacking, in my opinion.
Guideline 1.1
There’s nothing here that I would disgree with but I do think they’ve missed a couple of points:
Corrections to Guideline 1.1
“You can leave a text equivalent blank (e.g., null alt text, alt=”") if immediately –preceding or — following text has the same function as a text equivalent.” WCAG Samurai Errata
What about purely decorative or supportive images? They don’t fit neatly into this description.
I’ve used images to help convey concepts, emotions or ideas in order to support people with some form of reading problem. In some cases, using CSS to apply these images isn’t practical and, frankly, could be viewed as just sidestepping this particular situation rather than resolving it properly.
Also, I may wish to ensure that the image is present when CSS is disabled — a situation where supportive imagery may become even more important for those with learning difficulties. If I include alt text, I may be creating unwanted “noise” for screen reader users — some of whom may be the very people with reading problems that I’m trying to help. The last thing that they need is unnecessary complication of page content. So this potential situation cannot be just ignored.
Perhaps, when drafting the errata, it was assumed that using null alt text for decorative or supporting images was already fully understood and accepted?
Not good enough. It needs to be spelt out here. The document cannot make any assumptions about its readers or their pre-existing level of web accessibility knowledge.
The treatment of decorative or supporting images needs to be dealt with.
Charts and diagrams
No mention of maps. By which I mean “geographical maps”. I only recently came up against this problem when I had to insert a sketched map of an event venue layout into a page. How exactly do you convey this information via a text equivalent? Would your attempts to describe it in words be of any use whatsoever. Should you even try?
PDFs
I think the current Errata draft somewhat over-estimates the natural enthusiasm of site owners to produce properly tagged, accessible, PDF documents. Designers are often in a situation where they are given untagged and very basic PDF documents which are to be published via Web. Some guidance as to how to deal with these situations would have been very welcome.
Site Maps
Guideline 12. Provide context and orientation information
“Do not provide a sitemap or table of contents unless the site cannot be understood or navigated without it.” WCAG Samurai Errata
Now this really leapt out at me. Are we supposed to simply ignore the fact that many users rely heavily on a sitemap as their primary means of navigation? I can accept that a sitemap may not be needed on a small site of less than 20 or 30 pages. But what about sites that run into hundreds, or thousands, of pages?
This advice is even more worrying when viewed alongside one of the comments from the Errata Intro:
“Guideline 13.5: Not all sites or pages require navbars. Ignore.” Introduction to WCAG Samurai Errata
So, on this basis, I can have a lone page (a 404 page, for example) that does not contain any navigation links or a link to a sitemap? If a user lands on this page via an offsite link, how are they supposed to find what they are looking for? In this context, even the browser Back button is of no real use as it will merely take the user away from the site when they want to find information within it.
Suggestion
Amend Guideline 12.
Since some of the other Errata guidelines place the final decision in the hands of the developer, allow us some control over this one too. By all means, remove the mandatory requirement for a sitemap but let the designer decide if a site would benefit from it. The existence of a well-maintained sitemap will not, to the best of my knowledge, create a barrier for anyone. So, at worst, the benefit will be “no benefit”. On some sites, however, a sitemap could be an important addition, over and above, the basic site navigation.
With regard to the instruction to ignore WCAG 1.0 Guideline 13.5, amend this to read:
“Guideline 13.5: Not all sites or pages require navbars but ensure that all pages contain basic navigation links — such as a link to the site’s Home page.”
No user should ever be dumped, unceremoniously, on a page that contains no way to move to another page on the same site. Yet the draft Errata would seem to condone this. That can’t be right!
OK, I’ll read the whole thing later, but you didn’t quote enough of the documents. We aren’t ignoring cognitive disability. It’s just that we cannot graft a set of “correctionsâ€Â onto the paltry guidelines in WCAG 1 that purport to address it. We opted not to pretend we could do that.
Fair comment - although I thought I’d covered this when I said that I didn’t think the Errata could possibly cover the all of the issues faced by users with cognitive disabilities. I’ve amended my original post to try and clarify your position.
Overall, I think my own take on this is broadly in line with Gian Sampson-Wild’s comments in her technical peer review. I don’t necessarily agree with every single point she makes but I do think that there are some areas where the Errata could clarify or extend the original guidelines in a way that could benefit these users. I still don’t think we’ll have a level playing field (that’s probably going to take a lot more than the a single errata document) but it would be a pity to miss the opportunity to make some positive changes while we can.
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