Re: Proposal for moving COGA SC forward

Hi Mike...

Personally, I like this (the idea of expanding Principles/Guidelines) and I
certainly hope that it will propagate over to the Silver project, but we
may still run into the testability issues that are a part of WCAG 2.x.

Additionally, I think many of the topics you outlined could in fact live as
"child" guidelines under the 4 Principles. For example, "Conformity with
user expectations" and "Error tolerance" could (easily, I believe) live
under the "Understandable" principle as "Guidelines" (sans specific SC
today), while "Support for individualization" could be a Guideline under
the "Robust" principle. For example:

Perceivable:

   1. Guideline 1.1 – Text Alternatives
   2. Guideline 1.2 – Time-based Media
   3. Guideline 1.3 – Adaptable
   4. Guideline 1.4 – Distinguishable

​Operable:

   1. Guideline 2.1 – Keyboard Accessible
   2. Guideline 2.2 – Enough Time
   3. Guideline 2.3 – Seizures
   4. Guideline 2.4 – Navigable

​Understandable:​

   1. Guideline 3.1 – Readable
   2. Guideline 3.2 – Predictable
   ​

   3. ​​
   Guideline 3.3
   ​​
   – Input Assistance
   4.
*Guideline 3.4 ​ – Error tolerance​ (New)*

   5. ​
   ​

*Guideline 3.5 ​– Conformity with user expectations​ (New) *
             (just 1 idea - potentially this could also be a Guideline 2.5
   under "Operable" - for discussion)

​Robust:

   1. Guideline 4.1
   ​​
   – Compatible
   2. ​
*Guideline 4.2  ​– Support for individualization​ (New)*


I suggest this because "Guidelines" state the requirement(s) clearly (and
for many of the COGA issues, we certainly have that already), and each
current Guideline also has "Understanding" documentation assigned to them
(COGA has furnished much of this as well), yet "Guidelines" themselves
are *statements
of intent*, and not testable SC per-se.

That said, I'm still not sure how we then get specific Criteria included
(again because of the testability piece), but at least we'd have a
consistent (if expanded) WCAG structure to work within. Just spit-balling
ideas here... (and suggesting that getting intent and understanding into
2.1 would still be a significant advancement, no?)

JF

On Thu, May 25, 2017 at 8:56 AM, Michael Pluke <
Mike.Pluke@castle-consult.com> wrote:

> I think that Sailesh is probably right that pillars could/should be WCAG
> principles. Currently WCAG only has 4 principles, but other documents have
> several more - and the majority of these are particularly relevant to COGA
> issues.
>
> In our European work on cognitive accessibility we worked with 9
> principles. 8 of these came from the ISO 9241-110 standard. This standard
> includes the existing WCAG 2.0 principles (differently named) plus:
>
> - Conformity with user expectations:
>
> - Support for individualization
>
> - Error tolerance
>
> - Suitability for learning
>
> The final principle, which is incredibly related to cognitive and learning
> disabilities, was taken from ISO 9241-112. It was:
>
> - Freedom from distraction
>
> As these principles already have widespread international acceptance, I
> would have thought that adding these 5 new principles to WCAG 2.1 should
> not be too controversial. It is pretty easy to fit the existing COGA
> proposals under these principles.
>
> Best regards
>
> Mike
>
>
>
> On Thu, May 25, 2017 at 2:05 PM +0100, "White, Jason J" <jjwhite@ets.org>
> wrote:
>
> In general, and not only with respect to COGA proposals, I think the
>> working group will need to concentrate on a small set of high-priority
>> success criteria for inclusion in 2.1 if it is to meet the schedule
>> prescribed by the Charter.
>>
>>
>>
>> I would define “high priority” as a combination of (1) a high degree of
>> benefit to users with disabilities, and (2) capacity of the proposals to
>> achieve the quality requirements that need to be met by WCAG 2.x success
>> criteria.
>>
>>
>>
>> I think it’s inevitable that the group will focus on a relatively small
>> subset of the proposals in an attempt to bring WCAG 2.1 to completion; it’s
>> only a question of when we recognize this necessity and act on it (either
>> now, or later on as the deadline approaches and everyone belatedly
>> acknowledges what is needed). I would like to see proposals that have major
>> problems of testability and feasibility filtered into the supplemental
>> advice category, and the working group’s efforts concentrated on proposals
>> that have a chance of making it into the final Recommendation.
>>
>>
>>
>> *From:* Andrew Kirkpatrick [mailto:akirkpat@adobe.com]
>> *Sent:* Wednesday, May 24, 2017 11:19 AM
>> *To:* WCAG <w3c-wai-gl@w3.org>
>> *Subject:* Proposal for moving COGA SC forward
>>
>>
>>
>> We’ve been talking about ways to encourage the inclusion of success
>> criteria that benefit users with cognitive or learning disabilities in WCAG
>> 2.1.  The SC proposed by COGA are not going to all make it into WCAG 2.1
>> due to a variety of concerns ranging from testability to lack of working
>> group time to discuss all proposals. Unfortunately for end users with
>> disabilities, all of the SC proposed are designed to address real problems
>> faced by some users and without the SC being incorporated into WCAG 2.1 the
>> users are likely to continue to face barriers.
>>
>>
>>
>> Of course, this is also true for low-vision and mobile SC proposals, but
>> the issue is more acute for COGA as the SC proposals are much more numerous
>> and we want to help strategize on how to focus the efforts of the group on
>> a smaller set of COGA SC. With the supplementary guidance document, we will
>> be able to provide additional best practice-level suggestions to improve
>> access for users with cognitive disabilities, but we still want to have a
>> core set of items in WCAG 2.1.
>>
>>
>>
>> We are thinking about defining a set of "pillars of cognitive
>> accessibility" in WCAG 2.1 and then expanding on them in the supplemental
>> guidance. The pillars would likely be based on ideas from the COGA Roadmap
>> and Gap Analysis document (https://rawgit.com/w3c/coga/
>> master/gap-analysis/#roadmap---tables-of-user-needs) and would provide a
>> structure for 6-8 WCAG 2.1 SC and the additional guidance within the
>> supplementary document would follow the same pattern.
>>
>>
>>
>> This will require some additional work on the part of the COGA TF and
>> from this group as the current proposals may not fit precisely with the
>> pillars. We would be looking to draw from the SC proposals made earlier but
>> only include parts that directly relate to the applicable pillar and that
>> we think can pass the WG consensus process. Remaining concepts from the SC
>> proposals would be targeted for inclusion in the supplemental guidance
>> document.
>>
>>
>>
>> We wanted to see if the WG thinks this approach could work and would
>> support us in making sure we can increase the chance that we have a good
>> core of improvements for COGA in WCAG 2.1. Please let us know if you have
>> any thoughts or concerns.
>>
>>
>>
>> Thanks,
>>
>> AWK
>>
>>
>>
>> Andrew Kirkpatrick
>>
>> Group Product Manager, Accessibility
>>
>> Adobe
>>
>>
>>
>> akirkpat@adobe.com
>>
>> http://twitter.com/awkawk
>>
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-- 
John Foliot
Principal Accessibility Strategist
Deque Systems Inc.
john.foliot@deque.com

Advancing the mission of digital accessibility and inclusion