Re: EARL and describing tests Re: Agenda for F2F at TP

Charles,

Thanks for your example and explanation.

Shadi said:
> Our aim is *not* to develop a vocabulary to describe test cases
> but rather to identify some basic assumptions on which EARL is based.
>
I agree.

Charles said:
> What this doesn't do is decribe how to do the test. I think that it is
> useful to be able to describe procedures for people to follow, and code
> which can automatically run the test, but I don't see that EARL needs to
> do this.
>
Yes, this is what the test suite is for. For example, the test for missing 
alt attribute is:
http://www.w3.org/WAI/GL/WCAG20/tests/test1.html

All you need to do in your EARL statement is say that you've failed with a 
reference to this test.

> But we do have same basic ability to describe tests. We could use Dublin
> Core (for example) to give more detailed information about who is the
> author of a particular test, when it was developed, etc. To make this
> easy, all we do is keep using RDF.
>
Yes, but it may be easier just to reference a stable test.

> Nor does it describe the relationship between a group of tests, which I
> think should be done using OWL restrictions rather than inventing
> EARL-specific stuff that does the same thing.
>
We can now reference an accessibility guideline that contains all the tests 
that are required for conformance to that guideline. Example:
http://www.w3.org/WAI/GL/WCAG20/tests/wcag-2-0-aaa.xml

This is just a simple XML file but perhaps we could improve it using another 
technology as you suggested.

Here's how our checker says you have an image without an alt attribute in 
EARL:

- <earl:Assertion>
  <dc:date>2005-3-1T10:26:16-5</dc:date>
  <earl:Subject element="img" line="9" rdf:resource="#subject" 
xpath="/HTML/BODY/P/IMG" />
- <earl:Testcase 
rdf:resource="http://www.w3.org/WAI/GL/WCAG20/tests/test1.html">
  <earl:testId rdf:resource="1" />
  <earl:message>IMG missing ALT attribute.</earl:message>
  </earl:Testcase>
- <earl:result 
rdf:resource="http://www.w3.org/WAI/ER/EARL/nmg-strawman#Fail">
  <earl:confidence 
rdf:resource="http://www.w3.org/WAI/ER/EARL/nmg-strawman#high" />
  </earl:result>
  <earl:Assertor rdf:resource="#assertor" />
  <earl:mode 
rdf:resource="http://www.w3.org/WAI/ER/EARL/nmg-strawman#automatic" />
  </earl:Assertion>

I'm happy to hear all the new ideas in the group and hope we can make good 
progress this year.

Cheers,
Chris