Check Bartik against the Candidate Theme Req Issue (meta issue)

SO FAR...

Browser Support

* Themes must be cross-browser tested and look as similar as possible in standards compliant browsers. - This is obviously an ongoing process, but that will always be true
* Non-standards compliant browsers down to IE6 are still supported (for now) and therefore must "function." This means that layouts must not break, and obvious differences/bugs should be worked out. It also means, for example, that using border-radius to create rounded corners is perfectly acceptable and browsers that don't support this (lte IE8) are fine without them.

Drupal Coding Standards

* Coding Standards must be adhered to.
* CSS Coding standards, while still a draft, should be adhered to as much as possible. - Except where standards are still being debated, we're good!
* Template files should not exist in the theme unless they have been changed.
* Template files should not remove critical RDF/Accessibility functionality. - JohnAlbin is heading up some further accessibility checks
* Default regions should be used where possible (as opposed to creating new similar ones with different names)

Theme Features

* A print stylesheet must be included
* RTL styles must be added
* Color module must be supported
* Custom theme settings are not allowed (per webchick in D7) - Ok, ok .. we removed them :)
* Overlay must be supported
* Primary and secondary links need to be supported
* At least one additional region for navigation and content-related blocks

Web Standards, Validation & Accessibility

* Markup must be standards compliant - I checked 8 pages at random and all passed
* Must pass XHTML 1.0 Strict validation - we pass XHTML + RDFa
* CSS must validate under profile level 3 (CSS3), with the exception of browser extensions I turned on css aggregation and checked the same 8 pages.... all passed
* Compliance with WCAG 2.0 level AA should be the target, including:
Note: This does not apply to issues caused by Drupal core.

I dont know how to check this last one yet ^

what else has to been done? (except the last thing)

So this issue in itself is not actually critical anymore then? It looks like the only barriers to being a candidate theme are the other Bartick critical issues (2 others remaining this afternoon) and issues in core.
The only remaining item is the WCAG compliance is this is a massive core issue, not yet this theme's (http://drupal.org/project/issues/drupal?text=wcag&status=All&priorities=...). Standards compliant markup is a question mark, but that should be a separate issue in its own right, and you can't really take this forward until core theming is complete (see earlier issue queue link).
I would close this issue, but believe this is the privilege of the theme maintainer or @bleen18. We had some healthy discussion at a code sprint on this issue, so feel it's been pretty comprehensively reviewed.
Well done on checking the list off!

I think we should keep in mind that AA is a target, not an absolute requirement. I say this because to meet AA requirements across the board will mean each color scheme will be, most likely, high contrast. As a designer I am personally against AA color and contrast being a hard requirement for core themes because of this.

I do support the idea of including at least one very high contrast color scheme (something I have floated in the Corolla issue queue).

There is really only one fully reliable tool that I know of (there may be others) and thats the Color Contrast Analyzer available here (under Resources) http://www.accessibleinfo.org.au/

I see people tagging issues with "major", in lieu of no in-between priority.

Check Bartik against the Candidate Theme Req Issue (meta issue) is done :)
Congrats everyone, we accomplished this list and got Bartik into core.