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DRAFT RESPONSE: We are indeed working out how to include web content that may not fully
conform to all WCAG 3 Guidelines and Outcomes. We are aware that persons with
disabilities can often use content that doesn't fully conform, so we are
working out what content and how much partially conforming content may be acceptable. Meanwhile, this
approach is balanced by our emerging concept described in
Sec. 5.1.2.1: Critical Errors in the WCAG3
Explainer,
and exemplified in the current WCAG 3 Working Draft
Guidelines where critical errors
are enumerated, when they're identified, for each Guideline. It is important
to understand that a critical error can cause
web content to completely fail WCAG 3 Conformance, even though the
remainder of the content might actually evaluate as very acceptable.

@JaninaSajka This answer needs to be slightly revisited now that we are shifting approaches.

Approved Response

Thank you for your thoughtful response. This is one of the key areas of WCAG3 where it has been difficult to reach consensus because there is no clear good answer and we need more data and prototyping to determine the best path forward. Our intent has always been to have pass/fail conformance, but we have been exploring ideas that go beyond binary true/false success criteria.

We are aware of the importance of being able to determine that a website fully conforms for regulatory, legal, and testing reasons but there also are use cases for partial conformance. Some disability needs cannot be addressed within a binary measurement and therefore have been excluded from WCAG2. Some content that does not meet WCAG2 can still be used by people with disabilities. Content exists that cannot be made conformant for a variety of reasons that may not be under the control of the authoring organization. You can read some of our thinking about this complex topic in Use Cases for WCAG 3.0 Conformance draft that we have identified.

We are considering a variety of options to address this important issue, but do not have sufficient data yet to make an informed decision. We are first going to do a pass of the user needs that we wish to include in WCAG3 so we have good evidence to test which of our proposed solutions best addresses the user needs and the use cases we have identified. We will be sure to highlight these proposals in a future public draft where there will be sufficient examples to illustrate the problem and the solution(s) we are proposing.

Response above approved.