Notes

Speakers: Andy Clarke (http://stuffandnonsense.co.uk/), Patrick Lauke (http://www.splintered.co.uk/), Ian Lloyd (http://accessify.com/) and Gez Lemon.

Significant new features to WCAG2.0 (Wuh-kag)
- Baselines, a method for preventing “doc rot”
- Move from user agents to technologies (css, scripting)
- Conformance claim (date, version of doc, “this part is not accessible”) ** not a get-out clause

- Biggest dislike – the goal of WCAG2.0 is to be technologically-agnostic, but it ends up being meaningless

Andy Clarke: “we should be guideline-agnostic. We should always be endeavouring to develop the best products we can, regardless of what the guidelines state. It is important to understand the core concepts, but ultimately our focus should be on users and user experience”

Patrick Lauke: “You’re not creating accessible websites, you’re creating websites that follow certain rigorous guidelines”

WaSP - Accessibility Task Force
P.O.U.R. Websites: Perceivable, Operable, Understandable, Robust.

Impressions

I had been really looking forward to this session, but I’m afraid it disappointed. Perhaps I have a bias against panels, but I felt I didnt get as much out of this session as I’d hoped. Rather than go over specifics of the guidelines themselves, this was a more generic overview of the documentation out there ABOUT the guidelines. Particularly in light of recent articles disparaging the WCAG2.0 (for example, Joe Clark’s To Hell with WCAG2.0), I suppose I expected more tangible information on its merits (and/or, an agreement with fellow Canadian Clark).