RE: Requirements draft - objectivity

Hi there,

Websites form an eco system mostly involving many people in many functions making it a very delicate job to keep the balance between Fail and Pass or partial Fail and partial Pass on a webpage or website. Some websites have more than 200 content editors with or without accessibility training. If one of them has a bad day, this could touch them all. 

Tolerance metrics should cover that in the Methodology. Besides covering errors by the content editors it can also cover for small differences between evaluators. Based on different criteria (we have to decide on them later), evaluators can decide if a failure falls within a certain tolerance level and then report on that. I believe that if we always require a 100% score, no site (small or large) will be conformant 100% of the time. We already have the requirement for tolerance metrics in the list.

Would this cover your concerns?

Kindest regards,

Eric
________________________________________
Van: public-wai-evaltf-request@w3.org [public-wai-evaltf-request@w3.org] namens Kathy Wahlbin [kathy@interactiveaccessibility.com]
Verzonden: woensdag 21 september 2011 22:54
Aan: public-wai-evaltf@w3.org
Onderwerp: RE: Requirements draft - objectivity

Hi -

I agree with Detlev and Vivienne.  I have not seen a site that is 100%
compliant either and it is important to know the level in which the site is
accessible.  Most of the sites today utilize JavaScript libraries and other
complex controls that often prevent the site from being 100% compliant.

Also within a given guideline, there are mostly likely going to be cases
where most of the instances comply but there may be one or two that they
cannot change for some reason.  It would be good to be able to address these
situations so people know the level of conformance (it is important to know
if it fully, partially or does not meet the guideline).

Just for the record, I like the word conformance better than compliance.

Kathy

Thanks!

Kathy

Phone:  978.443.0798
Cell:  978.760.0682
Fax:  978.560.1251
KathyW@ia11y.com



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-----Original Message-----
From: public-wai-evaltf-request@w3.org
[mailto:public-wai-evaltf-request@w3.org] On Behalf Of Detlev Fischer
Sent: Wednesday, September 21, 2011 4:16 PM
To: public-wai-evaltf@w3.org
Subject: Re: Requirements draft - objectivity

Hi everyone,

By now I guess no one will be surprised that I agree with Vivienne here. As
I have said before, I have yet to see the "100% compliant site" (a real
CMS-based site out there, not three hand-knitted pages).
Show me one and I'll be all over it like a truffle pig. Since, as I like to
maintain, this thing does not exist, a conformance test that fails
practically every site out there seems kind of pointless to me.

Denis, you use the term 'compliance'. Is there a (perhaps subtle) difference
between compliance and conformance? (I guess we deal with conformance here).
To my non-native ear, conformance sounds as if it would allow a wee bit more
leeway in the sense of 'being not quite there, but nearly'. Compliance
sounds more forbidding, somehow.

Detlev

PS: Should you not have felt miffed by my impromptu alt text exercise
(Carter image), I'd be glad to receive a few more replies to that (I have a
few already). I forgot to say that will process incoming replies anonymously
- as I said, the point is not to compete here, just to take a practical
example of a SC that is kind of hard to do in a replicable manner, and get
an idea of the variance of ratings based on a real world case.

Quoting Denis Boudreau <dboudreau@accessibiliteweb.com>:

> 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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>
>
>



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Received on Wednesday, 21 September 2011 21:54:31 UTC