Re: for content review: Involving Users in Evaluating Web Accessibility

Hi All -

Apologies for the late response to this (so feel free to ignore
on that ground alone!).

I have mainly minor suggestions, listed below.

Aside from these detailed suggestions, I'm still concerned about
the question of enriching the resource with links to external
resources; but I accept that that has to be deferred for separate
discussion in a wider context.

Change suggestions:

* priority: [editor's discretion]
* location: Section "Range of User Involvement", end of first paragraph.
* current wording: "... extreme</strong>s"
* suggested revision: "... extremes</strong>"
* rationale: typo

* priority: [editor's discretion]
* location: Section "Range of User Involvement", last paragraph.
* current wording: "However, formal usability testing not required in
most cases."
* suggested revision: "However, formal usability testing is not required in
most cases."
* rationale: typo


* priority: [editor's discretion]
* location: Section "Include Diverse Users", first paragraph.
* current wording: ""visual disability" includes people who been
  totally blind since birth"
* suggested revision: ""visual disability" includes people who
  have been totally blind since birth"
* rationale: typo

* priority: [editor's discretion]
* location: Section "Include Diverse Users", second paragraph.
* current wording: "avoid the pitfall of only including people who are blind."
* suggested revision: "avoid the pitfall of, for example,
  including only people who are blind."
* rationale: I agree with the concern expressed by Sailesh
  Panchang that this point needs careful wording so as not to
  generate a wrong interpretation (for example, toward
  deliberately NOT including blind users!).  But I also know this
  text has already been through several iterations, and I don't
  want to extend it excessively with further long-wided
  qualifications. So my suggestion above is just
  one further attempt at slightly greater clarity.

* priority: [editor's discretion]
* location: Section "Include Diverse Users", final paragraph.
* current wording: not applicable
* suggested revision: Addition of final sentence reading:

  "Remember that user accessibility testing is never a
  <strong>substitute</strong> for <a href="conformance">expert
  evaluation of technical conformance to guidelines;</a> rather,
  the two are <strong>complementary</strong> aspects of
  comprehensive evaluation."

* rationale: I feel there is still a need to make this point more
  explicitly just here - despite the fact that a very similar
  thing (with a similar link) has already been said at the end of
  the introduction.


* priority: [editor's discretion]
* location: Section "Understanding [Findings/Results/Issues]"
* current wording: Section title "Understanding [Findings/Results/Issues]"
* suggested revision: "Diagnosing Accessibility Problems"
* rationale: We already have two options for the title of this;
  just throught I'd add another one!  But seriously, I think
  the word "diagnose" might work slightly better? I definitely do
  not like the subsconscious effect of the phrase "Placing the Blame".

* priority: [editor's discretion]
* location: Section "Understanding [Findings/Results/Issues]",
  first paragraph, second last sentence.
* current wording: "Users are likely to identify accessibility
    issues in different components; for example, when evaluating
    a Web site, the user might find an accessibility problem with
    the AT."
* suggested revision: Insert dditional, new sentence after above:

  Note that an individual user will not necessarily be able to
  accurately identify or separate the contributions of the
  separate components. Indeed, any given user may not even be
  consciously aware of their distinct roles.

* rationale: This is an attempt to clarify a confusion I
  experience in reading the sentence that is currently there.  It
  seems to read as if the user CAN reasonably be expected to
  identify which distinct component is responsible for a
  particular difficulty.  But I presume that is not something we
  mean to imply?  I would certainly only expect the most
  sophisticated users to be able to do that with any degree of
  accuracy.  But my suggested revision is still rather clumsy, so
  maybe there is a shorter, more elegant, way of expressing this.

* priority: [editor's discretion]
* location: Section "Understanding [Findings/Results/Issues]",
  list, final list item.
* current wording: "Web site - most problems will probably be
  things that you can fix in the Web site."
* suggested revision: Not sure!
* rationale: Re-reading this, I found I no longer understood what
  we were trying to get across with this point. As it stands
  might be read as saying that, of the various components
  involved, the web site is most commonly ("most problems") the
  one at fault.  I'm not sure I could agree with that anyway; but
  if that were the intention, it needs more clear expression.

That's my tuppence worth!


Best - Barry.

Received on Tuesday, 27 September 2005 17:08:08 UTC