Re: Requirements draft - objectivity

Hi Vivienne,


On 2011-09-18, at 10:39 PM, Vivienne CONWAY wrote:

> I think we need a way of demonstrating intent and recognizing progress.  I'm thinking that a website that is 80% of the way towards compliance is showing considerable more effort than the one that is only 10% of the way there.  How to measure this is the difficult part.  A static web site with limited number of pages and no multimedia content is going to find it much easier to reach WCAG 2.0 AAA than a big complex or media-rich site.

DB: I guess it all depends whether you want to "celebrate accessibility", or "validate compliance".

When you want to celebrate accessibility. you will be interested in recognizing progress. After all, every little fixes count towards meeting the very general goal that is accessible content.

When you're concerned about compliance, in my view, you should not care about whether or not people are almost right. they either are, or they're not. So in such a case, being 80% of the way there or only 10% is the same thing. As long as you're not 100% there, it's unacceptable.

Please do not see this as being dogmatic. It's just that there is no such thing as a percentage of compliance. You either comply or you don't. The closer you are of course, the easier it will be to get there, but until everything is perfect, it just cannot be considered compliant.

/Denis



> _______________________________________
> From: public-wai-evaltf-request@w3.org [public-wai-evaltf-request@w3.org] On Behalf Of Denis Boudreau [dboudreau@accessibiliteweb.com]
> Sent: Monday, 19 September 2011 10:21 AM
> To: Eval TF
> Subject: Re: Requirements draft - objectivity
> 
> Hello all,
> 
> I think there shouldn't be a problem talking about "objectivity" when we deal with normalization.
> 
> After all, standards should be measurable and therefore, objective. If we feel better using "agreed interpretations" it's all fine by me because I can relate to that as well.
> 
> But one way or another, we'll have to come up with these "agreed interpretations" and that, my friends, based on 10 years or so of watching divergent accessibility experts expressing different opinions on the subject, leads me to think it will not be easy! ;p
> 
> It could probably mean going through all the sufficient techniques and common failures and, for each and every one of them, come up with a list of "agreed interpretations" that all actually work out when common tests are being performed to measure the compliance to a specific success criteria.
> 
> Looking forward to *very interesting discussions* here... =)
> 
> Best,
> 
> /Denis
> 
> 
> 
> On 2011-09-14, at 6:09 AM, Detlev Fischer wrote:
> 
>> DF: Just one point on objective, objectivity:
>> This is not an easy concept - it relies on a proof protocol. For example, you would *map* a page instance tested to a documented inventory of model cases to establish how you should rate it against a particular SC. Often this is easy, but there are many "not ideal" cases to be dealt with.
>> So "objective" sounds nice but it does not remove the problem that there will be cases that do not fit the protocol, at which point a human (or group, community) will have to make an informed mapping decision or extend the protocol to include the new instance. I think "agreed interpretation" hits it nicely because there is the community element in it which is quite central to WCAG 2.0 (think of defining accessibility support)
>> 
>> Regards,
>> Detlev
>> 
>>> 
>>> Comment (KP): I understand the Denis' arguments. The more I think about
>>> this: neither "unique interpretation" nor "agreed interpretation" work very
>>> well. I would like to suggest "Objective". Because of the following reason:
>>> It would be one of Criteria for the quality of tests and includes Execution
>>> objectivity, Analysis objectivity and Interpretation objectivity. If we will
>>> have in some cases 100% percent fine, if not we can discuss the "tolerance".
>>> I would suggest:
>>> 
>>> (VC)  I'm still contemplating this one.  I can see both arguments as plausible.
>>> I'm okay with 'objectivity' but think it needs more explanation i.e. who defines
>>> how objective it is?
>>> 
>> 
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Received on Wednesday, 21 September 2011 19:38:45 UTC