Fwd: [wbs] response to 'Making Content Usable Wide Review Second Survey'

Hello,

I added the text from today's meeting to the survey along with a list of
the changes we made in response to previous comments.  I am forwarding this
to you all since these changes are results of COGA editing and discussion
(vs. a personal opinion)

Regards,

Rachael

---------- Forwarded message ---------
From: Rachael Montgomery via WBS Mailer <sysbot+wbs@w3.org>
Date: Thu, May 28, 2020 at 12:00 PM
Subject: [wbs] response to 'Making Content Usable Wide Review Second Survey'
To: <rachael@accessiblecommunity.org>


The following answers have been successfully submitted to 'Making Content
Usable Wide Review Second Survey' (Accessibility Guidelines Working Group)
for Rachael Montgomery.

>
> ---------------------------------
> Wide Review
>
> ----
> Are you comfortable with this document moving forward to a wide review
> under the banner of the Working Group?
>

 * (x) Yes, move to wide review
 * ( ) Yes, with the following changes
 * ( ) No, for the following reasons
Comments:
The COGA taskforce suggests the following wording change to address David
and Laura's comments about  "supplement":

ORIGINAL: "...The Objectives and Patterns presented here supplement the
Success Criteria presented in the WCAG accessibility guidelines and address
those user needs that are not fully met in accessibility guidelines...."

PROPOSED CHANGE: "The Objectives and resulting Patterns presented here are
not intended to replace or add requirements to the WCAG accessibility
guidelines. Rather, they are intended to address user needs that may not
otherwise be met so that more people with disabilities can use websites and
applications. This guidance is not included in the current normative WCAG
2.x specification.  "



Below is  a list of David's suggested changes from the previous review and
what was done to address them. Since the changes were not always identical
to the suggestions, it may be easier to review them together in a list.
Items that were not changed after discussion at COGA are preceded by an *.

1. SUGGESTION: For each pattern there is a "Success" example and a
"Failure" example. I don't think we should have a "failure" example.
Instead call it "unsuccessful"
CHANGE: Changed examples to Do or Don't

2. CURRENT: ... It gives advice on how to make content usable for people
with learning and cognitive disabilities. ...
SUGGESTED: It gives advice on how to make content <add>more</add> usable
for people with learning and cognitive disabilities.
*CHANGE: This change was not made as COGA was concerned that softening the
langauge in this way plays into the implicit bias that the barriers for
people with cognitive disabilities are lower than those for people with
other disabilities.

3. CURRENT: People with cognitive disabilities often use add-ons or
extensions as assistive technology.
SUGGESTED: People with cognitive disabilities <remove>often<remove>
<add>may</add> use add-ons or extensions as assistive technology.
*CHANGE: This change was not made as COGA felt the language was factually
accurate since the add-ons include spell checkers and other common
technology.

4. CURRENT: People with cognitive and learning disabilities may not be able
to effectively use web content because of the design and content choices of
the author.
SUGGESTED: Design and content choices can impact usage in ways that make it
difficult or impossible for some people with cognitive and learning
disabilities.
CHANGE: Changed this to "Poor design, structure and language choices can
make content inaccessible to people with learning disabilities.

5. CURRENT: However, for users with cognitive and learning disabilities,
these difficulties are likely to be persistent and significant, so that
they are unable to access content and may be forced to abandon tasks,
without any way to complete them unaided.
SUGGESTED: However, for users with cognitive and learning disabilities,
these difficulties are likely to be persistent and significant, so that
they may not be able to complete some of these tasks unaided.
CHANGE: Changed this to: " However, for users with cognitive and learning
disabilities, these difficulties are likely to be persistent and
significant. As a result, they could be unable to access content and
complete these tasks independently."

6. CURRENT: People may also experience a co-occurrence of difficulties such
as dyspraxia / developmental coordination difficulties and ADHD should also
be taken into account.
SUGGESTED: People may also experience a co-occurrence of difficulties such
as dyspraxia / developmental coordination difficulties. People with ADHD
may also be helped by some of these techniques.
CHANGE: Changed this to: "People may also experience more than one type of
cognitive and learning disability."

7. CURRENT: Accessibility has traditionally focused on the making the user
interface usable for people with sensory and physical impairments in
vision, hearing and/or mobility. Some accessibility features that help
these user groups also help people with cognitive impairments. People with
cognitive and learning disabilities also need improvements to context,
language, usability, and other more general factors that impact everyone to
some degree. As a result, they do not fit well into traditional
accessibility standards.
SUGGESTED: There have been difficulties including requirements for people
with cognitive disabilities in accessibility standards for the following
reasons:
(1) Large variance of individual needs in multiple sub categories of user
groups
(2) Lack of mature assistive technology for the consumption of web content
by people with cognitive disabilities
(3) Lack of peer reviewed research for users with cognitive disabilities
using the web
(4) Difficult to establish consistent test results from manual and/or
automated evaluation
(4) Difficult to identify solutions that scale across technologies in
multiple languages.
(5) People with cognitive and learning disabilities need improvements to
context, language, usability, and other more general factors that impact
everyone to some degree, and its difficult to measure the degree of
disproportionate usability by people with cognitive disabilities and to
test for these things.

As a result, some of the needs of people with cognitive disabilities do not
fit well into accessibility standards. In WCAG 2 and 2.1 there are many
Success Criteria that help people with cognitive disabilities but there are
also some gaps due to the reasons above.
CHANGE: Similar wording was in two places.  We removed this wording from
the design guide introduction and changed the wording in the introduction
to:"Traditionally, accessibility focused on making the interface usable for
people with sensory and physical impairments (vision, hearing and/or
mobility). Some accessibility features will help people with cognitive
impairments, but often the issues that affect people with cognitive and
learning disabilities are about context, structure, language, usability,
and other factors that are difficult to include in general guidance."

8. SUGGESTION: Add a sentence near the top (probably in the status)
something like, "This note is intended as helpful advice rather than an
extension to WCAG requirements. Specifically, WCAG as a standard is
independent of the suggestions in this document and this document has no
impact on WCAG conformance.
CHANGE: Updated abstract, reordered document and added langugage to the
design guide to make the distinction clearer.

9. SUGGESTION: In the "objective" sections, I don't think we should have
links to Github WCAG pull requests and issues with all the comments and
internal disagreements, etc... maybe move these SC proposals out.
CHANGE: Removed

10. SUGGESTION: There is a list of about 35 Success Criteria that were not
included in WCAG 2.1 because they didn't meet WCAG acceptance criteria. I
think these may need some sort of qualifier.
CHANGE: Removed

11. SUGGESTION: The table in "Guidance for policy makers" has WCAG Success
Criteria acceptance characteristics status for these above 35 SCs which
basically says every one of the SCs meets every one of the acceptance
Criteria we had for 2.1. I suggest this table would need a full revision
before inclusion
https://raw.githack.com/w3c/coga/changes-after-0327/content-usable/index.html#appendix-guidance-for-policy-makers
RATIONALE: I don't think we should compare disabilities against one
another. It may be perceived as divisive by people in those groups.
CHANGE:Removed

12. SUGGESTION: Provide clear language that states the relationship with
WCAG up front that it doesn't add to the requirements WCAG
CHANGE: Updated abstract, reordered document and added langugage to the
design guide to make the distinction clearer.

13.SUGGESTION: Remove links to WCAG Github issues and pull requests
CHANGE: Removed

14. SUGGESTION: remove or amend the table which says all the previously
unaccepted WCAG SCs meet all the SC Acceptance criteria
CHANGE: Removed

>
> These answers were last modified on 28 May 2020 at 15:59:10 U.T.C.
> by Rachael Montgomery