Re: Conformance claims - impact on requirements

Hi Detlev,

I think that reporting will be an important part of the methodology. I 
agree that the requirements may need to be drawn out some more.

WCAG 2.0 Conformance Claims would be part of an evaluation report. We 
can also make some things that optional in WCAG 2.0 required for the 
evaluation methodology. I think the corresponding section in WCAG 2.0 is 
pretty clear:
  - <http://www.w3.org/TR/WCAG20/#conformance-claims>

Best,
   Shadi

On 23.9.2011 12:17, Detlev Fischer wrote:
> Hi everyone,
>
> going through the in the document "Understanding Conformance" on
> conformance claims..
> http://www.w3.org/TR/UNDERSTANDING-WCAG20/conformance.html#d5e10885
>
> ...and Accessibility Support Statements..
> http://www.w3.org/TR/UNDERSTANDING-WCAG20/conformance.html#uc-support-statements-head
>
>
> .. I am left somewhat puzzled as to what is actually *required* in a
> WCAG 2.0 conformance claim.
>
> Why am I raising this question now? I thought it might be instructive to
> work backwards from the conformance claim (alongside an accessibility
> mark, seal, or whatever) backed up by tests based on our methodology
> that content would eventually want to place. All things that are
> mandatory for such a claim would have to be covered in our testing
> methodology so they can later be adequately referenced.
>
> The examples of ways to claim conformance in section "Understanding
> Conformance Claims" do not seem to be particularly precise in telling us
> the minimum requirements.
>
> There is talk about clains for
> * content added after a certain date
> * some content conforming to WCAG 1.0, other to WCAG 2.0
> * conforming to level A plus "report conformance to individual
> Success Criteria once Level A conformance has been achieved"
>
> If I interpret all this correctly, what is at least needed is
> 1 a time stamp of the claim
> (R: so this must be documented as the test is completed)
> 2 the scope given in a URL to an entire site or a section
> (or several) thereof
> (R: a URI defining the scope is needed, presumably including
> all and any states that might be called up dynamically on
> any URI within that scope - correct??)
> 3 The Level of conformance of the claim: A, AAA, or AAA
> (R: The methodology must accommodate tests bound to any one
> of the three levels: A, AA, or AAA)
>
> Not clear to me whether required (since excluded in *some* examples of
> conformance claims) are:
> * listing technologies that content "relies upon" (such a XHTML 1.0, CSS
> 2, etc)
> * listing accessibility-supported content technologies
>
> It is also not clear whether there needs to be, or should be, a default
> 'expiry date' of a claim, and any provsion explaining or specifying what
> changes to content would invalidate a time-stamped claim. For many web
> sites, it is clear that content added can quicky affect the level of
> accessibility claimed, especially regarding the 'monster' SC 1.3.1 and
> also 1.1.1. It also places uncertainty on the requirement of
> replicability, this time not because of varying assessments by experts,
> but because the thing tested is a moving target.
>
> Then, some requirements are already headlined as optional. Interesting
> here is the statement of content technologies "used but not relied upon"
> because this might be seen as a clear indication that technologies have
> been used in the manner of progressive enhancement / graceful
> degradation - which is not equally clear from Conformance requirement 5,
> non-interference
> (http://www.w3.org/TR/WCAG20/#cc5)
>
> The requirements indicated above (R:) may not need to be listed in that
> detail in our requirements document. It might be helpful though as it
> indicates some technical 'musts' for any tools being built (or revised)
> on top of our methodology.
>
>
>

-- 
Shadi Abou-Zahra - http://www.w3.org/People/shadi/
Activity Lead, W3C/WAI International Program Office
Evaluation and Repair Tools Working Group (ERT WG)
Research and Development Working Group (RDWG)

Received on Wednesday, 28 September 2011 08:46:43 UTC