Re: Costs of testing with Silver

Thanks for putting this together Wilco, it’s really interesting to see how you’ve modelled the costs.

Regarding the idea of ‘light’ versions of guidance, this is something that we are looking at but using a slightly different lens. Different services are going to require different levels of accessibility guidance based on the complexity of the components that are used and the different interaction methods that are employed. One of our current ideas in dealing with this is to look at the concept of a tagging system that can be used to categorise conformance methods based on different criteria. These criteria can be things like technology, project role, accessibility area, and of course website type. This means that users will be able to search for, and filter, guidance based on queries such as:

“I am looking for [Getting Started] advice for all guidelines that deal with [Visual Accessibility]”
“I develop using [generic coding language] and am looking advice on implementing [Cognitive Accessibility]”
“I am making an [e-commerce site], show me all the things I should look at”

Whilst this doesn’t look at the concept of accessibility cost directly, it does begin to show how we can narrow down the scope of applicable guidance and methods for individuals based on a more personalised experience. Of course, with this it is looking at accessibility from a proactive standpoint instead of the retrospective standpoint used within testing but I don’t see an issues in this type of thing being adapted to work with both.

I hope that this explanation helps. We’re currently in the process of putting together a prototype system to show how this system will work going forward and I’ll make sure to pass it on when it is working.

Best Regards

Mike

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Dr Michael Crabb
Lecturer (Human Computer Interaction)
School of Science and Engineering, University of Dundee
+44 (0)1382 385491 | m.z.crabb@dundee.ac.uk<mailto:m.z.crabb@dundee.ac.uk>


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From: Wilco Fiers <wilco.fiers@deque.com>
Date: Thursday, 6 September 2018 at 13:10
To: <dsloan@paciellogroup.com>
Cc: <public-silver@w3.org>
Subject: Re: Costs of testing with Silver
Resent-From: <public-silver@w3.org>
Resent-Date: Thu, 06 Sep 2018 12:09:42 +0000

David, Mark,
Not to ignore your suggestion of putting together a document, but I think we need to have at least some common idea of what to do about this cost question before we can put anything together. I'm happy to work on something once we've gotten closer to a solution, but I think this discussion needs to run its course first.

@John, you've raised a lot of concerns now, but I haven't really heard any alternative suggestions from you yet. The question is, how do we enable organisations with a small budget to still use Silver?

Another perspective I want to add is that organisations are already using "light" versions of WCAG. Even the W3C has gotten in on that game with the easy checks (https://www.w3.org/WAI/test-evaluate/preliminary/). Many organisations use approaches like this. The question isn't if these types of tests should exist, but if we as a community want to recommend how to do this in a way that doesn't leave big gaps.

Here's the thing. If we don't create a conformance level in Silver that is affordable to small businesses, either they'll do nothing instead, or they'll use some third party "light" testing method that didn't go through the quality controls of the W3C consensus process.

It seems to me like Silver should be achievable not just for the top 5% of websites. If you want to talk percentages, this is the discussion we should have. How many websites do we think should conform to Silver? Knowing if a site conforms required at least one test in the lifetime of a website. Ive created a Google spreadsheet to help us see how the cost of audits disproportionally impact low budget websites:

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/144ddhHfBUbRtWEoPdJ8MqsBDq0wzHDHgWJ-yL-fH7Ow/edit?usp=sharing (Let me know if anyone wants me to share a plain HTML version of these tables)

Feel free to play around with the numbers. I think this shows quite well how 1) small sites need to reserve a disproportionately high budget for accessibility testing, and 2) how this could be solved by making adjustments for complexity of the website in Silver.

Wilco


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