Conformance Claims

Following is a suggested revision and augmentation of the material on 
conformance claims in the 2/26/99 version. By Eric Hansen {EH}.
====
Conformance Levels

This document defines three conformance levels: {EH: Please note below that 
the following approach avoids confusion by removing reference to priorities 
in the titles of conformance levels}

1. Conformance Level 1 (CL-1): Conforms to {EH: or "Follows" or "Adheres 
to" or "Satisfies"} all priority one checkpoints. 
2. Conformance Level 2 (CL-2): Conforms to all priority one and two 
checkpoints.
3. Conformance Level 3 (CL-3): Conforms to all priority one, two, and three 
checkpoints. 

Conformance Claims

Claims of conformance must provide the following information.

1. Content scope: The scope of the content that the claim covers, e.g., a 
portion of a page, a single page, or a whole site. 
2. Conformance level: Which level (CL-1, CL-2, or CL-3) has been achieved. 
3. Guidelines title: E.g., "W3C Web Content Accessibility Guidelines". 
4. Guidelines URL: The URL of the guidelines document, e.g., 
<http://www.w3.org/TR/1999/WD-WAI-PAGEAUTH-19990226> 
5. Limitations: Any limitations in the claim.

_Conformance claims may include additional information_, as discussed in 
the Techniques document. 

=========
{EH: Material for Techniques Document}

Additional Information for Conformance Claims

Following is additional information that may be appropriate to include as 
part of a conformance claim. Some of this material may be required to 
communicate the limitations of the claim.

1. Validation date: The date(s) on which adherence was validated {EH: One 
of the key features of Web content is its updatability. This information 
would help one determine if and when Web content should be revalidated.}

2. Validation method: Which method(s) were used to validate the claim {EH: 
Bobby vs. Inspection by developers vs. Evaluations by people with 
disabilities, etc.}

3. Reference URL and relationship: Other relevant page and relationship to 
it (e.g., URL of main page and explanation that this page is an accessible 
"alternative" page): URL and explanation of the relationship to it

{EH: The additional ones below could be added as well, along with 
explanations.}
4. Comment
5. Exception
6. Substitution
7. Waiver
8. Qualification
9. Interpretation

Example of a Conformance Claim

Following is an example of a conformance claim. In order to facilitate 
exposition of the example claim, it has been broken into several sections. 
{EH: I suggest that the working group post a page on the Web as an actual 
example. I use one of my own below as a placeholder.}

Content identifier (required): "This page 
(http://www.ets.org/indxtext.html)þ"

Conformance level (required): "þachieved Conformance Level 1 þ"

Qualifications: "þby avoiding Priority 1 problems (Bobby "Accessibility 
Errors") that were definitively identified by Bobby 3.0 beta. (Bobby cannot 
definitely identify all Priority 1 problems)."

Guidelines title (required): "Bobby 3.0 beta uses the 21 July 1998 version 
of the WAI Page Author Guidelines,þ" 

Guidelines URL (required): "þwhich is located at 
http://www.w3.org/WAI/GL/19980721txt.htm."

Reference URL and relationship: "This page is an accessible version of a 
page located at http://www.ets.org/indxtext.html."

Validation date: This validation occurred on 26 January 1999.

Comments: An earlier version of this page was reviewed for screen-reader 
friendliness in December 1998 by an accessibility expert who is blind.

{EH: Where should one put these claims? Do we want to suggest a standard 
meta tagging scheme for this purpose? Eventually, for example, there needs 
to be some standard way of documenting the fact that an alternative, 
accessible page is a substitute for a specific main page.}

=============================
Eric G. Hansen, Ph.D.
Development Scientist
Educational Testing Service
ETS 12-R
Rosedale Road
Princeton, NJ 08541
(W) 609-734-5615
(Fax) 609-734-1090
E-mail: ehansen@ets.org

Received on Wednesday, 3 March 1999 15:33:01 UTC