Re: XForms and Adobe Forms - WAI Version 1 AA Compliant

Steven Pemberton wrote:
> You could design forms with XForms that were not accessible, but you 
> would have to go out of your way.

This seems a reasonable claim so far as the design of the XForms 
language goes, but given this is a citizen portal I'd have thought an 
important question what do citizens need in order to actually use XForms?

XForms is unsupported in any popular browser without either installing a 
plugin/addon or using a JS library to fake XForms behaviour:

http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/library/x-xformsxbrowser.html

Wouldn't dependence on either put a website in contravention of WCAG 1.0 
Checkpoint 6.3 (Priority 1) [1]?

In practical terms, it's not clear that the various XForms solutions out 
there have been tested for cross-platform accessibility, although at 
least IBM Workplace Forms Viewer claims to work with screen readers 
supporting the Microsoft Active Accessibility framework [2]. For 
example, there are JS-based solutions that claim to work in Safari but 
do they also work with the VoiceOver screen reader?

Of course, one could provide a scriptless HTML forms-based alternative, 
but then one could do this with /any/ inaccessible forms technology.

[1] http://www.w3.org/TR/WAI-WEBCONTENT/wai-pageauth.html#tech-scripts

[2] 
http://www-1.ibm.com/support/docview.wss?rs=2357&context=SS6RTP&q1=msaa&uid=swg27008965&loc=en_US&cs=utf-8&lang=en

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Benjamin Hawkes-Lewis