Re: thoughts points system for silver

Hi Charles,

> I also have a pretty strong opinion that the level of effort of the
author / creator is both immeasurable and moot.

Well, actually, in 3rd party development shops, level of effort is measured
in hours-to-perform any given task: that is usually how they pay their
staff, and bill their clients, and so it is both measurable and important.
(At Deque, we bill routinely our clients on a combination of time and
materials.)

When it comes to meeting specific requirements, some are trivially easy to
do (adding the language of page declaration to the top of the site's
template page(s)), whereas others are significantly harder (producing
captions and audio-description resources for multi-media content). I'll
also suggest that the provision of either (or failing to provide either)
have different levels of impact on some (but not all) end-users.

Consider as well the provision of both alt texts as well as longer
descriptions: I can have a tool plug in *alt="image"* (or AI generated
*alt="may
contain images of text"*) for all of the image files on a site, and it
would technically conform (yet be functionally useless); conversely, it
takes time and thought to craft useful alt text, and more so a text
description for complex images. Failing to acknowledge this time and
financial impact on site owners would be (I posit) a real mistake. That
said, *I don't think this factor alone should have a direct impact on the
scoring*, but it *should* be part of a scoring calculation.

In my proposal, I am simply suggesting that 'effort' be used as a
multiplier in a base-score calculation: in my straw-man proposal I
suggested 3 levels of easy, harder, hardest. Easy has a multiplier of 1,
harder is 2X and hardest is 3X. Then, as we look at individual requirements
I am suggesting that impact on a user group or groups (or, more accurately
user-requirement(s)) would also be a scoring factor. I had used a proposed
level of 1 - 10, where lower benefit requirements have a lower impact
value, and requirements with a higher user-benefit has a higher value. Thus
the calculation for a base score per requirement would be (benefit to user
X effort multiplier = base score).

I'll note in closing that this was also why some existing SC in WCAG 2.x
are AA versus A (even if the requirements are both important to the end
user) - that the impact on the creator was also a consideration in the
A/AA/AAA calculation back during the WCAG 2.0 development days.

JF

On Thu, Jul 18, 2019 at 10:34 AM Hall, Charles (DET-MRM) <
Charles.Hall@mrm-mccann.com> wrote:

> My understanding is that there is interest (but possibly not consensus)
> that the practice of usability testing – especially when it includes
> participation of people with a wide range of functional needs – is a
> behavior the guideline intends to encourage.
>
>
>
> What is undecided / not agreed upon is how. If attached to conformance,
> then it must consider the level of effort and cost associated with that
> practice, because now there is a specific action dependency on ability to
> conform (more on effort below). If attached to a second currency, then that
> currency should have significant value, or there is little to no
> encouragement.
>
>
>
> My opinion (and I say this as a UX person) is that testing itself is the
> wrong emphasis. What the guideline should encourage is outcomes. This point
> has been made in a few email threads: the act of testing is not an
> indicator that the results of testing and insights gained were applied or
> that those changes had any measurable human impact. I also have a pretty
> strong opinion that the level of effort of the author / creator is both
> immeasurable and moot. It is possible to create a conforming site {x} ways
> with {n} effort. It is equally possible to create a non-conforming site
> with clear barriers {x} ways with {n x n} effort. There is rarely causation
> or even correlation between effort and outcome, and when there is, it is
> fairly difficult to measure. It also scales down with maturity – in this
> case, accessibility maturity. So I could spend months and millions on
> usability testing and building or modifying a thing based on insights. The
> next thing I build or modify is going to take less effort to get the same
> outcome from both reusable patterns and institutional knowledge.
>
>
>
>
>
> *Charles Hall* // Senior UX Architect
>
>
>
> (he//him)
>
> charles.hall@mrm-mccann.com
> <charles.hall@mrm-mccann.com?subject=Note%20From%20Signature>
>
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>
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>
> *From: *Chris Loiselle <loiselles@me.com>
> *Date: *Tuesday, July 16, 2019 at 10:05 AM
> *To: *Silver Task Force <public-silver@w3.org>
> *Subject: *[EXTERNAL] thoughts points system for silver
> *Resent-From: *Silver Task Force <public-silver@w3.org>
> *Resent-Date: *Tuesday, July 16, 2019 at 10:04 AM
>
>
>
> Hi Silver,
>
>
>
> Just a thought off of today's call:
>
>
>
> In regard to point system, would the fact that user testing was completed
> at a given organization during the development of a product give them extra
> points vs. not completing user testing at all?
>
>
>
> For each demographic of user testing, grading all user tests equally,
> would someone who tests with a user that has limited sight and a user that
> is hard of hearing not receive as many points as someone that tests with
> someone who is Blind, someone who has low vision, someone who is Deaf,
> someone who is hard of hearing, someone with a cognitive disability (etc.)?
>
>
>
> What if the organization went deep on depth of testing with the user who
> is Blind and the user who has limited sight, but only went surface level
> (breadth) with multiple users each with a different disabilities vs. diving
> deep with two users ? Would those be weighted differently? The same? I know
> there was discussion on ribbons, points, badges, where would that come into
> play?
>
>
>
>
>
> Thank you,
> Chris Loiselle
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-- 
*​John Foliot* | Principal Accessibility Strategist | W3C AC Representative
Deque Systems - Accessibility for Good
deque.com