What actually is an APA review, anyway?

Dear APA, RQTF, and FAST colleagues,

I was asked recently about an aspect of how APA conducts its reviews, and it
got me to thinking about what we _really_ look for, and how we might help
document and improve the review process, making it accessible for new APA
members, just as we are working on making it more accessible for spec
authors (some announcements to come there soon!)

The specific question I was asked was: do we check that specs ensure that
appropriate info is exposed via the accessibility tree? My thought was yes,
but actually by the time most specs get to us, we are beyond that stage, and
technical groups tend to be good at ensuring those things happen.

My feeling is that the main insight APA provides in reviews is to highlight
the use cases - user needs, or requirements, if you will - that groups might
otherwise have overlooked, or been unaware of. That's why all of you are
already experts at reviewing things!

Our Research Questions Task Force [1] (RTQF)'s Accessibility User
Requirements (AUR) documents [2] are an ideal source of such user
requirements - as well as good general advice on how to meet users' needs.
They may not cover every technology we might review, but they certainly
cover some key use cases that spec authors might not have thought of, and
they are very clearly written. So the AURs are a great reference for any APA
reviewer. But also, perhaps our reviews could feed back into those AUR
documents... for example: we could well find user needs that an existing AUR
doesn't mention (maybe because of a new type of device being used to access
the content), or we may start getting hints about what the next AUR should
cover. So we should also be feeding back to RQTF on these things, to help
them update the AURs, and plan future ones.

Finally, I think the Framework for Accessibility in the Specification of
Technologies (FAST) TF [3] fits in here in a key way: I'd say the 'elevator
pitch' for FAST is that we're providing resources to spec authors at design
time, such that when they get to full horizontal review, they've already
considered the user needs that RQTF's AURs have documented.

In that way, there's scope for stronger collaboration between APA WG (in the
horizontal review sense), RQTF, and FAST. I think as a group this is
informally how we have been working already, and informal is good, but
having some pointers for new APA members to the fantastic resources
available from RQTF, and providing pointers also to give feedback to RQTF on
those, as well as having the FAST folks monitor for things we need to put
into specs in the first place, would be great.

What do you all think? (I'm cross-posting to APA WG, RQTF, and FAST - please
reply-to-all if you want everyone to get your message.)

best regards,


Matthew

[1] RQTF:
<https://www.w3.org/WAI/about/groups/task-forces/research-questions/>
[2] Digital Accessibility User Requirements (AUR) documents:
<https://www.w3.org/WAI/research/user-requirements/>
[3] FAST TF: <https://www.w3.org/WAI/about/groups/task-forces/fast/>

Matthew Atkinson
Head of Web Standards
Samsung R&D Institute UK
Samsung Electronics
+44 7733 238 020

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Received on Monday, 8 September 2025 19:39:17 UTC