Re: Costs of testing with Silver

This is a very interesting idea that I do think we need to discuss.  
When I was first thinking about Silver two years ago, I had a thought 
that we could do automated testing for a basic level of accessibility.  
As we went through all the research and started forming the ideas and 
proposals, I had forgotten about it.  I am open to looking at this in 
more detail.

My concern would be the amount of disability needs that could be 
included in reduced-cost testing, particularly the non-physical needs, 
like cognitive disabilities.  I know there is new research and testing 
in the last couple years that could be a viable solution.

I would like to schedule this discussion so we could have a number of 
people involved who care about this issue, and devote an entire meeting 
(or more) to it.


On 8/28/2018 6:19 AM, Wilco Fiers wrote:
> Hey all,
>
> Firstly, all hats off. Sharing a personal view here. I wanted to reach 
> out about a thing that I've been concerned with regarding Silver. With 
> WCAG 2.1 I saw some discussions about the increased cost of testing 
> compared to WCAG 2.0. Thinking about the adoption of WCAG 2.0 from 
> WCAG 1.0, there too I saw that the amount of work it took to do 
> accessibility testing had increased quite significantly.
>
> I'm concerned that (as far as I can tell) there hasn't yet been a 
> discussion about costs of testing with Silver. I know its still early 
> days, but I think that we should have that discussion, and decide what 
> kind of target we'd like to hit for Silver. There are all these 
> fantastic ideas floating around, about score cards, usability testing, 
> expanding to include non-web technologies. Lots of great stuff, but we 
> have to be aware that all of these things are going to have a price tag.
>
> I would very much like for the Silver group to decide how much they 
> think the cost of doing accessibility testing is allowed to increase. 
> Is it okay for the costs of testing to double between WCAG 2.0 and 
> Silver like they did from WCAG 1.0 to 2.0? Is it allowed to increase 
> at all? Should Silver be designed to decrease costs instead?
>
> Making Silver easier to use, lowering the barrier to entry, those are 
> fantastic goals. But those things really don't matter if someone can't 
> get the budget to do accessibility testing. And without testing, you 
> can't maintain an accessible site. I don't think it's unreasonable to 
> think that if Silver decreases the cost of accessibility testing, it 
> could get wider adoption than WCAG 2 did. Where is if the opposite 
> happens, if testing for Silver is far more expansive than it is for 
> WCAG 2, that organisations might just stick with WCAG 2 for a long 
> time to come.
>
> Personally, I'm of the opinion that WCAG 2 is already too expansive. 
> When I was still testing WCAG 1, I'd regularly test websites of 
> smaller organisations. Those organisations stopped coming when the 
> costs went up for WCAG 2. I think a good target for Silver would be 
> that at the bronze level, costs for testing are about half what they 
> are for WCAG 2.0 Level AA. I believe that that would make it 
> affordable again for small businesses, which I think should be a goal 
> for Silver.
>
> Either way, Silver needs to be designed with an eye on testing costs, 
> and it would help if we had some goals defined for it.
>
> -- 
> *Wilco Fiers*
> Senior Accessibility Engineer - Co-facilitator WCAG-ACT - Chair Auto-WCAG