Action item: Review Verifiable Credential Data Integrity

For my action item, I submit the following thoughts and look forward to
reviewing them with APA before formulating a response back to the VCWG.

- Lionel

Task: Review Verifiable Credential Data Integrity 1.0, Securing the
Integrity of Verifiable Credential Data,  W3C First Public Working Draft 10
November 2022 for accessibility considerations.
URL: https://www.w3.org/TR/vc-data-integrity

Response:

AUDIENCE CONSIDERATIONS (BACKGROUND TO THIS REVIEW)

The audience of the specification seems to be VC Implementers. These
implementers are specialists such as application developers who will
populate, read and program the systems that will handle these credentials.
The audience is not VC Holders: people requesting, holding and using
credentials in the course of their everyday lives to accomplish tasks where
VCs are required. As such, APA likely has little to say.

APA may want to remind the VC WG that credentials need to be usable by
their Holders. To compare with physical credentials in real life such as a
driver's license or passport, the credential should have features making it
inspectable, usable and manipulable by the Holder. Compare with other, less
usable credentials such as the original paper Social Security Card, which
could not be read by a blind person. Considering the needs of people with
disabilities, designers of credentials and the experience of using
credentials must enable accommodations and affordances that meet PwD needs.
Such affordances may be overlooked in a typical design process (by sighted
designers).

APA understands that the VC WG (and DID WG) wish to relegate any such
potential useability issues to the digital wallet that will enable use of
VCs, and the VC-WG and DID-WG have deliberately made such wallet features
out of scope. APA concurs, in principle, with the engineering strategy of
leaving usability to the concern of the digital wallet provider. However,
we see some potentially significant value in having reminders of this need
even in low level specifications, as these are the specifications that will
be read by the development team, and an opportunity to bring accessibility
to their front of mind should not be squandered. That leads to our
suggested addition of an accessibility section, one that might find its way
into other VC and DID low level specifications:

PROPOSED? TO BE REVIEWED WITH APA WG

7. Accessibility Considerations

Users of Verifiable Credentials will ultimately have access to the
information conveyed by the parameters in this specification, and will need
to make decisions based on these parameters. Implementers are reminded that
any software mediating Verifiable Credentials will need to be useable by
people with disabilities (including cognitive disabilities, dyscalculia,
low vision, etc.). While the user experience of digital wallets is beyond
the scope of this document, this note is included here to keep awareness of
these upstream needs in mind, as low level decisions can hamper
accessibility at the user experience level, e.g. as when non-semantic and
difficult to interpret values are communicated with no ability to interpret
them.

IN ADDITION, THE FOLLOWING TWO MINOR COMMENTS

MINOR: The terminology in section 1.4 should be sorted in alphabetical
order, to conform with expectations of such a glossary

MINOR: The specification implies that it has passed due diligence and
expert review. People with dyscalculia would have difficulty understanding
the specification's non-normative sections. They need references to
interpret and rely on the information presented, as they cannot verify its
veracity themselves. If more such external references and material could be
provided, it would help.

- Lionel

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