

Re: 3.1: Action item re foreign passages

From: Charles McCathieNevile <charles@sidar.org>
Date: Thu, 09 Jun 2005 13:56:33 +0200
To: "Ineke van der Maat" <inekemaa@xs4all.nl>, "Matt May" <mcmay@w3.org>, w3c-wai-ig@w3.org
Message-ID: <op.sr3p4juxw5l938@pc048.qadoc.oslo.opera.com>

On Wed, 08 Jun 2005 19:26:00 +0200, Ineke van der Maat  
<inekemaa@xs4all.nl> wrote:

> Hello Matt
> You wrote:
>> I propose leaving comments or other contributions from users of the  
>> site out of the scope of WCAG 2.
> I think that can not be proposed, but this should be the practice.

It should be neither proposed, nor the practice. Where people have  
mechanisms allowing other people to add content to their website, and they  
have failed to make those mechanisms ATAG-conformant and check what gets  
uploaded, they should leave that content out of the scope of their  
individual conformance claim.

(I think the freedom of expression argument is, as it generally is in  
WCAG, a red herring. However...

> When somebody want to do it in my contributions, I certainly will  
> protest and even ask a court where my copyright / freedom of expression  
> ends.

I believe it was Lincoln who said "where my nose begins" in response to an  
analgous question.

Freedom of expression is an ideal, nothing more. I believe that certain  
symbols of the Nazi party are still banned in some European countries, you  
are not free to express what you think of the work you do if it happens to  
be for the CIA or a Nuclear Weapons facility in a sensitive area, and you  
are not free to defame another person.

Likewise, in a situation where accessibility is a requirement, your  
freedom of expression may be limited (in a given legal context) to require  
that what you express is made available to other people. I think what you  
are talking about is what is known as "integrity" - the most obvious  
example I can think of is Monty Python suing US TV networks for putting ad  
breaks into inappropriate places in their TV series. Not allowing people  
to translate works is not, as far as I am aware, recognised anywhere.

You are not being forced in most cases to make these hypothetical  
contributions, and it is therefore generally recognised that certain  
conditions may be set for your contributions to be accepted -  
registration, agreement to transfer of copyright under some form or other,  
warranting that the content does or does not meet certain criteria, are  
all very normal. I don't understand why accessibility should not be one of  
those criteria).



Charles McCathieNevile                      Fundacion Sidar
Received on Thursday, 9 June 2005 11:56:41 GMT
