WCAG Samurai

The WCAG Samurai was a group of developers, led by Joe Clark, that publishes corrections for, and extensions to, the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 1.0.

Read the errata

As of 26 February 2008, the WCAG Samurai errata for Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 1.0 are available.

Peer review

Before publication of the errata, we arranged for two separate independent peer reviews:

All but one of the Samurai were unaware that the review was happening. The reviewers did not know about each other and had no limitations on what they could write. The reviews were published only in time for the unveiling of the errata and were not read by anyone, including anyone in the Samurai, beforehand.

Translations

About the Samurai

WCAG Samurai was a year in the making and was introduced to the public in the article “To Hell with WCAG 2” published by A List Apart on 22 May 2006.

WCAG Samurai membership rolls will not be published, and membership was by invitation only.

What WCAG Samurai was not doing:

  1. Running a vanity project in some other guise.
  2. Writing criticisms of the W3C.
  3. Writing errata for WCAG 2 (now definitively ruled out).

Contact

Just send E-mail to samurai at this domain.

News and information

There’s now a newsfeed (RSS/XML) for WCAG Samurai.

2008.02.26

Final errata released.

2007.08.12

We’ve done a paper-edit of the two peer reviews and are on track to agree on and ship a final version. It won’t be hugely different.

2007.08.05

The interesting and relevant project in which we were offered a role has gone mams-up, so we’re going back on schedule, which is another way of saying we’ll pick up right where we left off well more than a month late.

2007.07.26

We were delayed yet again because we were offered a role in an interesting and relevant project.

We want to make a few things clear.

  • We know you don’t like the tone. Maybe it will be ironed out. Or maybe you’ll just have to live with it. You’re acting like WCAG 1 and 2 don’t have a tone, or that the Working Group doesn’t.
  • We know the PDF section is too obviously a cut-and-paste from the article at A List Apart. That was simply an error of copy-editing.
  • No matter how much you ask and no matter who you are, we will not be writing new guidelines for cognitive disability. We concisely explained why not and we have an airtight case.
  • We don’t care if you think that rare sites would do better with a single three-column layout than with CSS, or if you think that invalid CSS is a great idea sometimes, or that you are able cook up whatever other edge case. If you know that much, you don’t need the Samurai errata and you could write your own.
  • This is an errata document for typical Web developers and represents one group’s opinion. We have no obligation, at all, to represent your opinion.
  • No, Joe did not do all the work.

We appreciate many of the critiques. Why wouldn’t we? We ordered up two custom critiques ourselves. But some of the criticisms are nonsense, and we’d like you to knock it off.

2008.06.15
Brazilian Portuguese translation available, thanks to the very patient Mauricio “Maujor” Samy Silva. Translations will eventually be unified onto this site.
2007.06.07
Errata published.
Peer reviews published.
2007.05.14
We’re moving the release date back to the second @media conference, in London June 7–8, 2007.
2007.02.23
As announced onstage at Web Directions North 2007, WCAG Samurai will publish its errata in time for @media 2007 San Francisco, May 2007.
2006.11.29
Getting tired of people’s inability to understand a few paragraphs of text. Clarified to the point of redundancy. Quit getting this wrong, please.
2006.11.10
Work continues. If it seems to be going slowly, it is.
2006.09.01
We have begun initial work, but don’t have a lot to report yet, as it was summertime in the Northern Hemisphere and nearly everybody involved was away on holiday or otherwise occupied.

Posted: 2006.05.23 ¶ Updated: 2008.06.15 17:02

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