Re: Auto-WCAG - Expert system approach?

Hello,

You will also find an example from the EIII project at:
https://www.accessiblecheck.com/

Thanks,
Mikael

On 25. okt. 2016 14:24, John Hicks wrote:
> Dear Alistair,
> 
> I am not sure exactly which meeting it was or if it referred to something I
> might have said :
> 
> Urbilog.fr has developped 3 automatic testing tools based on Expert System
> in the AI sense.
> 
> The "Expert" part was not user input but the "clips" expert system as
> created by nasa :  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CLIPS
> 
> The essence of the idea is to transform each HTML element into a statement
> in a declarative language and then test the truth of these statements
> w.r.t. the rule-set in question (508 and Wcag 1 in the beginning, RGAA
> later).
> 
> One of these tools also had the question and answer part, which, as you say
> becomes so very tedious so quickly.
> 
> I am still hoping to get one of these applications, designed for IBM
> initially, but to which the IP rights belong to the developper, into open
> source.
> 
> John
> 
> 
> 
> 
> On 25 October 2016 at 14:07, Alistair Garrison <
> alistair.garrison@ssbbartgroup.com> wrote:
> 
>> Hi Wilco, All,
>>
>>
>>
>> In the July 2015 Auto-WCAG blog - https://www.w3.org/community/
>> auto-wcag/2015/07/24/introducing-the-auto-wcag-user-input-template/,
>> under Next steps I was reading that:
>>
>>
>>
>> “Some participants of the auto-wcag community group are currently
>> implementing the prototype of a User Testing Tool based on the questions
>> developed in the structured approach described in this post. The tool runs
>> in the user’s web browser and connects to a database storing the user
>> input.”
>>
>>
>>
>> Out of interest, could I ask which participants are working on this
>> “expert-system” tool? And, if work is still under way?
>>
>> I too developed an interview based expert-system ages ago – for testing
>> the accessibility of a web page (thankfully they were more static back
>> then).
>>
>>
>>
>> With all such systems you call your tests “rules”, and you follow a very
>> similar grammar to the one proposed in Auto-WCAG.  I used Jess formatting
>> initially (http://herzberg.ca.sandia.gov/), then developed my own system…
>>
>> I finalised my expert system some years ago – it looked at WCAG 1.0 AA.  I
>> demoed it to several organisations, and got some good reviews!
>>
>> The issue was that although an interesting way to proceed – only when you
>> actually used it for commercial audits did you realize how slow such as
>> process is.  The same questions have to be asked again and again of the
>> user – for example, for each img node – which is overkill if you are only
>> looking to find enough faults to show something is an issue.
>>
>>
>>
>> For example, http://wilcofiers.github.io/auto-wcag/rules/SC1-1-1-text-
>> alternative.html - Contains questions you need to ask the user about each
>> image – “Is this element solely for decorative purposes”?
>>
>>
>>
>> With actual implementation knowledge, it is certainly not an approach I
>> would suggest for large-scale monitoring purposes, as it simply takes too
>> long to assess each page looked at; and requires human judgement which can
>> be wildly different.   Auto-WCAG tests, being formatted in a very specific
>> way, also will not slip easily into other testing platforms.
>>
>> My understanding was that we were concentrating on developing fully
>> automatic tests – which could be plugged into any testing platform – the
>> output from which could easily be compared.
>>
>>
>>
>> With manual steps in a number of the current tests, which also include
>> design constraints such as “Presented item - Web page (with title either
>> highlighted or in a seperate textbox)”, I think we are making it hard for
>> ourselves to achieve the comparability goal; or even create tests that
>> achieve AUTO-WCAG’s desired aims.
>>
>>
>>
>> It would only take a short amount of time to re-assemble the current
>> “rules” into sets of atomic fully-automated tests – by leaving the manual
>> testing steps aside; and I wonder if this isn’t the direction we should be
>> moving in instead – and may prove significantly quicker.  Which, I also
>> should mention seems to have been the approach of the EIII project from
>> which Auto-WCAG was initially born (http://checkers.eiii.eu/en/tests/).
>>
>>
>>
>> My question to the group is “are we developing Auto-WCAG rules for an
>> expert system tool”? and, if yes – why exactly?
>>
>>
>>
>> I’d be very interested to discuss the above, and hear comments from the
>> whole group.
>>
>> All the best
>>
>> Alistair
>>
>> ---
>>
>> Alistair Garrison
>>
>> Senior Accessibility Engineer
>>
>> SSB Bart Group
>>
> 

-- 
Mikael Snaprud
www.Tingtun.no
Cell: +47 91 862 892
Co-ordinator of www.eiii.eu

Received on Tuesday, 25 October 2016 12:32:45 UTC