Re: thoughts points system for silver

My understanding is that there is interest (but possibly not consensus) that the practice of usability testing – especially when it includes participation of people with a wide range of functional needs – is a behavior the guideline intends to encourage.

What is undecided / not agreed upon is how. If attached to conformance, then it must consider the level of effort and cost associated with that practice, because now there is a specific action dependency on ability to conform (more on effort below). If attached to a second currency, then that currency should have significant value, or there is little to no encouragement.

My opinion (and I say this as a UX person) is that testing itself is the wrong emphasis. What the guideline should encourage is outcomes. This point has been made in a few email threads: the act of testing is not an indicator that the results of testing and insights gained were applied or that those changes had any measurable human impact. I also have a pretty strong opinion that the level of effort of the author / creator is both immeasurable and moot. It is possible to create a conforming site {x} ways with {n} effort. It is equally possible to create a non-conforming site with clear barriers {x} ways with {n x n} effort. There is rarely causation or even correlation between effort and outcome, and when there is, it is fairly difficult to measure. It also scales down with maturity – in this case, accessibility maturity. So I could spend months and millions on usability testing and building or modifying a thing based on insights. The next thing I build or modify is going to take less effort to get the same outcome from both reusable patterns and institutional knowledge.


Charles Hall // Senior UX Architect

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From: Chris Loiselle <loiselles@me.com>
Date: Tuesday, July 16, 2019 at 10:05 AM
To: Silver Task Force <public-silver@w3.org>
Subject: [EXTERNAL] thoughts points system for silver
Resent-From: Silver Task Force <public-silver@w3.org>
Resent-Date: Tuesday, July 16, 2019 at 10:04 AM

Hi Silver,

Just a thought off of today's call:


In regard to point system, would the fact that user testing was completed at a given organization during the development of a product give them extra points vs. not completing user testing at all?



For each demographic of user testing, grading all user tests equally, would someone who tests with a user that has limited sight and a user that is hard of hearing not receive as many points as someone that tests with someone who is Blind, someone who has low vision, someone who is Deaf,  someone who is hard of hearing, someone with a cognitive disability (etc.)?



What if the organization went deep on depth of testing with the user who is Blind and the user who has limited sight, but only went surface level (breadth) with multiple users each with a different disabilities vs. diving deep with two users ? Would those be weighted differently? The same? I know there was discussion on ribbons, points, badges, where would that come into play?


Thank you,
Chris Loiselle

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