Re: Requirements draft target audience

Hello all,

Following are my own comments, based on the proposed target audiences.


On 2011-09-06, at 6:47 PM, RichardWarren wrote:

> * Target Audience:
> A01: All organization evaluating one or more websites
> Comment: The initial "All" is not required. Individuals can also evaluate- they don't need to be part of an organisation, so long as they have the knowledge and tools. It is accessibility evaluation as promoted by WCAG. So I would prefer
> #A01 Organisations or individuals undertaking website accessibility evaluation for conformance with WCAG.

I don't believe we need to indicate WCAG. It should be obvious in the context that this is oriented towards WCAG. I would suggest: 

#A01 Organizations or individuals evaluating website accessibility conformance


> A02: Web accessibility benchmarking organizations
> Comment: Benchmarking requires verifiable and consistent results, so this is a good group to include to help keep us on track

Absolutely. +1.


> A03: Web content producers wishing to evaluate their content
> Comment: This is particularly relevant to large organisations such as government websites where individual departments provide content updates etc. into templates using a company wide CMS. However these people are not normally HTML experts so we need to devise a system that gives them the information they need at an appropriate level whilst not boring the pants off accessibility experts!

Agreed. This is probably a good time to suggest we breakdown the evaluation process into different smaller checklists, aimed at different contributors or web functions (designers, content providers, architects, developers, etc.). We're working on something like this for the Web Experience Toolkit (canadian govt) and it's proven to be quite effective with our clients as well: <http://alpha.gcwwwtemplates.tbs-sct.ircan.gc.ca/theme-clf2-nsi2/accessRespBreakdown-eng.html>.

Planning in our methodology that every contributor to a project is responsible for integrating accessibility in his or her own processes is a great way to ensure that accessibility is taken into consideration at every stage of the web development lifecycle. In my opinion, a methodology that suggested every content producers, whatever their contribution, had their own checklist of things to look out for would be very structuring and useful.


> A04: Developers of Evaluation and Repair Tools
> Comment: Tool developers might/should be interested, and find the procedures useful, but they should not be a target audience as their needs are different and to cover these is outside of our scope. I would prefer to drop this group.

I believe so too. These are probably better served with ATAG, and unless I'm mistaken, the primary focus here is WCAG.


> A05: Policy makers and Web site owners wishing to evaluate websites
> Comment: Policy makers and website owners may require the results of the procedure, but they are not (normally) technical people so I would prefer not to include them as a target audience. However website developers (those who actually build the sites) are technical and should be able to use the procedure. So I would prefer
> #A05 Website developers who wish to evaluate their sites pre and post production

I disagree. This counter proposal starts to look a lot like the A01. Both groups could be merged and I don't think we'd miss on anything.

I don't think we should drop the policy makers either. While it is true they are usually not technical enough to be able to conduct evaluation, they need to know how and why evaluation testing being done. 

Also, having spent the past 4 years of my life with such people building our own localized standard, I can only wish we had documents like those to help them better understand what's at stake. As such, I think our methodology should address their concerns, one way or another, just like an executive summary would. Maybe by providing a high level overview of the methodology, so they better understand how things need to be done to be thorough and ensure compliance once the methodology is integrated in the organizations they make those policies for.

I am not sure however, that it's a good idea to put website owners and policy makers in the same group, which is why I suggested another at last week's teleconference:

A01: Evaluation Organizations, Web Content Producers and Benchmarking Organizations
A02: Web site owners wishing to evaluate websites
A03: Developers of Evaluation and Repair Tools
A04: Policy makers

Based on what Richard wrote, I guess I could consider throwing the Benchmarking organizations back in. ;p

I am interested to get feedback from you all on this counter proposal.


> The person(s) using the Methodology should be knowledgeable of the Guidelines and people with disabilities.
> Comment: Agreed.

+1 as well.

This is an absolute necessity as far as I'm concerned.

-- 
Denis Boudreau, président
Coopérative AccessibilitéWeb 

1751 rue Richardson, bureau 6111 
Montréal (Qc), Canada H3K 1G6 
Téléphone : +1 877.315.5550 
Courriel : dboudreau@accessibiliteweb.com
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Received on Thursday, 8 September 2011 15:18:57 UTC