Re: Defining website scope using Sitemap protocol

Dear Kathy and Alistair,

The purpose of the scope statement in the eventual evaluation should be to help future evaluators or moderators know what has been evaluated. A clear scope statement ensures that :-
a) The owner, the evaluation team and any future evaluators or moderators know exactly what was included in the evaluation and what was not.
b) Users of the website can distinguish which parts are compliant and which parts may not be compliant.

We cannot dictate what tools, if any, are used to help define the scope. Our concern is that the eventual scope statement is clear, unambiguous and verifiable. That is why I suggested the following as an initial draft for section 7


7. Procedure to express the Scope of the evaluation

While the WCAG 2.0 Recommendation focus on webpages, the Evaluation 
Methodology focuses on evaluating the conformance of a website. This means 
that it is important to define what is considered to be part of the website 
and what is not. To be more precise, to define what is part of the coherent 
collection of one or more related web pages that together provide common use 
or functionality. This can include static web pages, dynamically generated 
web pages, and/or web applications.

A clear scope statement ensures that
a) The owner, the evaluation team and any future evaluators or moderators 
know exactly what was included in the evaluation and what was not.
b) Users of the website can distinguish from the URI and any link text which 
parts are compliant and which are not.

7.1 Key functionalities
The primary purpose of the website should be defined. This sets the context 
of the evaluation. It is important that any exceptions (see 7.3 below) do 
not prevent the website from performing this function in a compliant way.

7.2 Base URI
The use of the URI is the clearest way to define the scope of an evaluation. 
The base URI is the most appropriate starting point. This would normally be 
a domain name such as mysite.com, but it could be a subsection such as 
mysite.com/education/. If everything within that domain or subdomain is to 
be included in the evaluation then that single statement is sufficient.

7.3 Exceptions
Where part of a site or sub-site is to be excluded from the evaluation it is 
important to clearly state the relevant descriptions and URI's of sections 
to be excluded or included. The decision regarding whether to specify the 
inclusion or exclusion areas will depend upon the size and detail of the 
part to be excluded or included. In addition to the URI the 
inclusion/exclusion statement should include a text description. For example 
"The application process initiated by the form at 
mysite.com/forms/application/appform.php is excluded from this evaluation"

7.4 Complete Processes
Whilst it is desirable to test individual components of an application 
during development this approach is not supported by this evaluation 
methodology. If any part of a process is to be excluded from the evaluation 
then the whole process should be excluded.

7.5 If the overall evaluation process is to be divided into teams of 
evaluators (e.g. for a large site) then each team will have its' own 
specific scope statement for the relevant task in hand. A single, combined, 
meaningful scope statement must also be prepared to cover the whole 
evaluation.


Regards

Richard






From: Kathy Wahlbin 
Sent: Sunday, November 27, 2011 3:29 PM
To: 'Alistair Garrison' ; 'Eval TF' 
Subject: RE: Defining website scope using Sitemap protocol

Hi Alistair –

 

I think that is a good place to get started and to see the pages on the site but we need to keep in mind that these are only for the areas that webmasters want search engines to crawl.  There may be areas of the site that need to be reviewed that were excluded from this sitemap.xml file.

 

Another way to get an idea of scope is to use the functions in the content management system (CMS) to see all the pages on the site.  Within the CMS, the number of templates and common components could also be identified which could help defined scope.

 

Regards,

 

Kathy

 

Phone:  978.443.0798

Cell:  978.760.0682

Fax:  978.560.1251

KathyW@ia11y.com 

 

  

 

NOTICE: This communication may contain privileged or other confidential information. If you are not the intended recipient, please reply to the sender indicating that fact and delete the copy you received. Thank you.

 

From: Alistair Garrison [mailto:alistair.j.garrison@gmail.com] 
Sent: Saturday, November 26, 2011 8:06 AM
To: Eval TF
Subject: Defining website scope using Sitemap protocol

 

Dear all, 

 

It seems that a good number of website owners / webmasters submit a sitemap to search engines.  The schema of choice for this sitemap (file) is apparently the Sitemap protocol - http://www.sitemaps.org/ (supported by Google, Yahoo!, and Microsoft.)

 

What would your thoughts be on using this sitemap file generated for a website, by the website owners / webmaster, to define the scope of a website? Possibly answering the question - How can an evaluator express the scope of a website.

 

Would be interested to hear thoughts / comments.

 

All the best 

 

Alistair 

 

 

 

 

Received on Sunday, 27 November 2011 18:36:42 UTC