Telecon Action / Methodology Title

Dear All, 

During our last telecon, I mentioned that with all the word play around the word "conformance" the purpose of the document, in my mind, was becoming less and less clear.

I undertook an action to walk through the document and note any aspects which might be leading to this loss of clarity. 

My findings are that the loss of clarity was due to the simple fact that I have somehow been missing, when reading this document, a key sentence in the abstract of this document. 

The key sentence is "It (this document) is primarily designed for evaluating existing websites, for example to learn about and monitor their level of accessibility..." 

This information does not seem to be stated *in this clarity* in any other part of the document, so if you miss it you may end up a little uncertain.

In light of the above, my three proposals would be:

1) that this sentence just needs to be in bold, as the document and its usefulness become plainly apparent when read in this context.
2) to state the sentence quoted above in the Introduction.
3) to start the "Purposes of this methodology" with this quoted sentence.

Based on the above, I would also be happy to keep the current document title - recanting my suggestion to change it.

Hope this helps.   

Alistair

Begin forwarded message:

> From: Alistair Garrison <alistair.j.garrison@gmail.com>
> Subject: Re: Methodology title and acronym
> Date: 14 November 2013 15:00:59 GMT
> To: Shadi Abou-Zahra <shadi@w3.org>
> Cc: Eval TF <public-wai-evaltf@w3.org>
> 
> Hi Shadi, 
> 
> I also thought estimate sounded like a bill…  I'm in no way married to the word estimation / estimate… It is, however, clear that the current title / non-matching acronym is misleading, with people already thinking the title of the document being something else due to the acronym. 
> 
> The point of my email was to try and address the new "extent of conformance of websites", rather than "conformance of websites" nuance - in effect we are estimating the likely conformance of a website based on a carefully selected sample.
> 
> We state clearly that in the majority of situations an out-and-out conformance claim cannot be made for a website using this methodology (as all pages need to be checked), which is mirrored nicely by the "extent of conformance of websites" idea - it's just that the title clearly states "Website Accessibility Conformance Evaluation Methodology"…
> 
> Also, I suppose we should state WCAG somewhere in the title - as that is what we are evaluating conformance against.
> 
> I don't now, the title just doesn't feel 100% correct… You are more than right when you say be careful when you are opening a can full of worms… 
> 
> All the best 
> 
> Alistair 
> 
> On 14 Nov 2013, at 14:24, Shadi Abou-Zahra wrote:
> 
>> Hi Alistair,
>> 
>> Be careful when you are opening cans full of worms... ;)
>> 
>> Seriously though, I think "estimate" sounds too tentative and does not do justice to the thorough outcomes from following such a methodology.
>> 
>> "Estimate" also sounds like a "quote" (price estimate) rather than the actual evaluation (or assessment) outcome. I find it hard to process.
>> 
>> Anyway, I *do* think this document describes a methodology to evaluate the conformance of websites with respect to accessibility. So we took these keywords and tried to put into the shortest title possible.
>> 
>> Is there a particular issue that you want to address or just fine tune?
>> 
>> Thanks,
>> Shadi
>> 
>> 
>> On 14.11.2013 14:27, Alistair Garrison wrote:
>>> Dear All,
>>> 
>>> "Website Accessibility Conformance Evaluation Methodology" does not give WCAG-EM as an acronym.
>>> 
>>> Seemingly the title does not exactly match the current ideal that the "document provides guidance on evaluating the extent of conformance of websites to the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.0".
>>> 
>>> And, I wonder, also, that the title of the optional output - the "Accessibility Conformance Evaluation Statement" is also out of line with the new ideal.
>>> 
>>> The proposal I would like to float is to change the word Evaluation to Estimation in the title -
>>> 
>>> The title would become "Website Accessibility Conformance - Estimation Methodology", with the acronym (WAC-EM) - and the output statement would be something like "Website Accessibility Conformance Estimate".
>>> 
>>> It's just for thought.
>>> 
>>> Very best regards
>>> 
>>> Alistair
>>> 
>>> 
>>> 
>>> 
>> 
>> -- 
>> 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)
>