RE: Editorial formatting (was CFC - Add Findable Help to WCAG 2.2 draft)

Hi John,

It’s a useful exercise to see if we can simplify things.

In this case, we’re proposing to take out the ‘blocks of content’ bit, and when you drop the whole SC text (new version<https://raw.githack.com/w3c/wcag/wcag22-findable-help-updates/understanding/22/findable-help.html>) into Hemingway it comes out as Grade 5.

Also, given the bullets underneath I think it would read awkwardly to have two bullets followed by a separate set of 4 bullets, we’d have to take the SC as a whole into consideration.

However, hopefully we all find the new version reads more easily just by virtue of having less stuff in it…

-Alastair


From: John Foliot <john.foliot@deque.com>
Sent: 17 June 2020 21:58
To: Alastair Campbell <acampbell@nomensa.com>; WCAG <w3c-wai-gl@w3.org>; public-cognitive-a11y-tf <public-cognitive-a11y-tf@w3.org>
Subject: Editorial formatting (was CFC - Add Findable Help to WCAG 2.2 draft)

Hi All,

Putting aside the subject of this CfC for a minute, as I was looking at this another thing struck me: the originally proposed opening sentence was difficult for me to parse. Being a big fan of the Hemingway App, I went over there and gave it a whirl.

The originally proposed text* in github:

[cid:image001.png@01D64502.F62AA790]
[alt: screen capture of the GitHub page showing the new "diff" addition of text]

HTML stripped and pasted into Hemingway App:
[cid:image002.png@01D64502.F62AA790]
[alt: screen capture of the text pasted into the HemingwayApp Editor. It also shows a reading score of "Post-graduate"]

As I suspected, the "readability" score of that sentence was determined to be "Post-graduate". Ouch.

Then I tried a bit of reformatting  of that text, like so:

For single page apps or any set of web pages with blocks of content that are repeated on multiple web pages:
 * if one of the following is available,
 * then at least one of the following is included or linked in a consistent location.

[cid:image003.png@01D64502.F62AA790]
[alt: screen capture of the reformatted text pasted into the HemingwayApp Editor. It now shows a reading score of "Grade 6"]
Now, I recognize that not everyone agrees that "reading score" has a value for all users with cognitive disabilities, but it also strikes me that with some simple formatting we can make our requirements and proposed requirements easier to read for everyone, and I think at some point we may have lost sight of that here.

I also understand that this CfC has not passed, so this proposed SC is being put aside for now as we race toward our publishing deadlines for WCAG 2.2. None-the-less, I encourage us all to try and remember to try and say things simply and clearly, and to check not only the substance of our work, but also when required, the presentation of our work.

Thanks all!

JF

* the text proposed: For single page apps or any set of web pages with blocks of content that are repeated on multiple web pages, if one of the following is available, then at least one of the following is included or linked in a consistent location:

--
John Foliot | Principal Accessibility Strategist | W3C AC Representative
Deque Systems - Accessibility for Good
deque.com<http://deque.com/>
"I made this so long because I did not have time to make it shorter." - Pascal "links go places, buttons do things"