[Accessibility] Draft #2 -- Statement On Conformance

Janina Sajka janina at freestandards.org
Wed Jul 20 09:03:49 PDT 2005


FSG Accessibility Standards facilitate consistent and robust support for
individuals with disabilities.  They also facilitate the creation and
distribution of assistive/adaptive technologies and user agents appropriate to
a range of end-user abilities and to ensure that applications and operating
system services operate in cooperation, rather than in conflict, with such
technologies.

What Conformance With FSG Accessibility Standards Does

* makes it possible for applications to support assistive technologies
(though it does not, of itself assure that applications do so);

* ensures that basic levels of operating system support for keyboard and
mouse accessibility enhancements are available;

* specifies a set of assistive technology interfaces which :
   -> provide the necessary information and services required by
assistive technologies;

* ensures that assistive technologies written to those interfaces
will run on conformant platforms.

 As FSG Accessibility Standards mature and become more comprehensive, and as
more and more platforms and applications conform to them, it can be expected
that platform services and applications will become ever more accessible to
more and more users and user circumstances.  However, no single application
nor service nor aggregate of applications or services, should be construed to
make a platform or application "accessible."

What Conformance With FSG Accessibility Standards DoesNOT Do
 
Although FSG Accessibility Standards provide technologies necessary to
facilitate accessibility, they do not guarantee that any particular user will
be able to use any particular platform service or application. Furthermore,
conformance with any particular FSG standard on accessibility, and even the
aggregate of all FSG Accessibility Standards, does not guarantee accessibility
for any particular user or class of users.  Conformance with FSG Accessibility
Standards should be understood as  providing a minimal baseline of binary
compatibility between applications, platform services, and the assistive
technologies and user interface adaptations typically utilized by persons with
disabilities for  accessing computing platforms and applications. No warranty
is provided or implied, including no warranty of merchantability nor of
fitness for any particular purpose, user, user class,  or any particular
accessibility requirement whether or not such conformance has been duly
certified through the FSG.

-- 

Janina Sajka				Phone: +1.202.494.7040
Partner, Capital Accessibility LLC	http://www.CapitalAccessibility.Com
Bringing the Owasys 22C screenless cell phone to the U.S. and Canada. Go to http://www.ScreenlessPhone.Com to learn more.

Chair, Accessibility Workgroup		Free Standards Group (FSG)
janina at freestandards.org		http://a11y.org




More information about the Accessibility mailing list