Re: Costs of testing with Silver

Hi Everyone,

I have been reading all the posts with great interest. I have one question, and my apologies if this has been covered. I am coming into this late and hello to everyone as this is my first post.

Reading the posts, I see that the focus is websites. Are you also considering documents, virtual reality, robots, etc.?  Or are you just considering websites? This could bring different factors into the discussion.

My 2 Canadian cents about business and costs. I would not focus on the cost discussion, but what resources can be developed or linked to in order to help people do audits quicker and easier. They will never be easy, because there are many grey areas in how to interpret WCAG (and this will always be the case, it just comes with the territory). However, if more educational resources could be linked and more examples that are relevant to the time can be posted (which I believe the discussions in the last two months have focused on from what I see), then this would help in the overall goal. 

Cheers

Lisa

Lisa Snider
Senior Digital Accessibility Consultant & Trainer
Access Changes Everything
Web: www.accesschangeseverything.com <http://www.accesschangeseverything.com/>
Phone: (800) 208-1936

On 2018-08-29, 12:31 PM, "David Sloan" <dsloan@paciellogroup.com> wrote:

    Hi all
    
    I’ve followed this discussion with interest, and also some concern, some of which has also been expressed by Charles in his contributions.
    
    I recognise the business logic of attaching costs to any additional activity that Silver might introduce on top of current requirements of WCAG, the tension between guidelines as educational tools and measurement tools, and how this might impact on what Silver looks like. I think it’s an important conversation to continue, but I’m concerned at the risk that this conversation might lead to the perception that certain requirements that would benefit specific disability groups are more likely to be rejected on cost grounds. 
    
    There are valid arguments for providing levels of conformance, but I think the arguments are weakened when there’s a clear imbalance between conformance levels and user groups covered at each level. 
    
    The concept of Hierarchy of Disability (or Impairments) has been used to describe and explain the relative historic dominance of certain disability groups over others in terms or receiving attention and support. Past work has shown where WCAG (and wider accessibility discourse) has been uneven in coverage of the needs of different disability groups, and efforts like the COGA Task Force are examples of attempts to redress the balance. 
    
    Any perception that Silver might be the product of a more aggressive cost/benefit analysis before defining requirements might be damaging, especially by members of disability groups who argue that Silver should better represent their needs than WCAG does currently. I hope the conversation can continue in a way that recognises and addresses this risk.
    
    Dave
    
    
    --
    David Sloan
    --
    UX Research Lead
    The Paciello Group
    https://www.paciellogroup.com
    A VFO™ Company http://www.vfo-group.com/
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Received on Wednesday, 29 August 2018 21:36:42 UTC