Re: Conformance and method 'levels'

Hi Charles,

I for one am under the same understanding, and I see it as far more
granular than just Bronze, Silver or Gold plateaus, but that rather,
through the accumulation of points (by doing good things) you can advance
from Bronze, to Silver to Gold - not for individual pages, but rather **for
your site**.  (I've come to conceptualize it as similar to your FICO score,
which numerically improves or degrades over time, yet your score is still
always inside of a "range" from Bad to Excellent: increasing your score
from 638 to 687 is commendable and a good stretch, yet you are still only -
and remain - in the "Fair" range, so stretch harder still).

[image: image.png]
[alt: a semi-circle graph showing the 4 levels of FICO scoring: Bad, Fair,
Good, and Excellent, along with the range of score values associated to
each section. Bad is a range of 300 points to 629 points, Fair ranges from
630 to 689 points, Good ranges from 690 to 719 points, and excellent ranges
from 720 to 850 points.]

I've also arrived at the notion that your score is never going to be a
"one-and-done" numeric value, but that your score will change based on the
most current data available* (in part because we all know that web sites
[sic] are living breathing organic things, with content changes being
pushed at regular - in some cases daily or hourly - basis.)

This then also leads me to conclude that your "Accessibility Score" will be
a floating points total with those points being impacted not only by
specific "techniques", but equally (if not more importantly) by functional
outcomes. And so the model of:


   - *Bronze: EITHER provide AD or transcript*
   - *Silver: provide AD and transcript*
   - *Gold: Provide live transcript or live AD.*


...feels rather simplistic to me. Much of our documentation *speaks of
scores* (which I perceive to be numeric in nature), while what Alastair is
proposing is simply Good, Better, Best - with no actual "score" involved.

Additionally, nowhere in Alastair's metric is there a measurement for
"quality" of the caption, transcript or audio description (should there be?
I believe yes), nor for that matter (in this particular instance) a
recognition of the two very varied approaches to providing 'support assets'
to the video: in-band or out-of-band (where in-band = the assets are
bundled inside of the MP4 wrapper, versus out-of-band, where captions and
Audio Descriptions are declared via the <track> element.) From a
"functional" perspective, providing the assets in-band, while slightly
harder to do production-wise, is a more robust technique (for lots of
reasons), so... do we reward authors with a "better" score if they use the
in-band method? And if yes, how many more "points" do they get (and why
that number?) If no, why not? For transcripts, does providing the
transcript as structured HTML earn you more points over providing the
transcript as a .txt file?  A PDF? (WCAG 2.x doesn't seem to care about
that) Should it?

(* This is already a very long email, so I will just state that I have some
additional ideas about stale-dating data as well, as I suspect a cognitive
walk-through result from 4 years ago likely has little-to-no value
today...)

******************
In fact, if we're handing out points, how many points **do** you get for
minimal functional requirement for "Accessible Media" (aka "Bronze"), and
what do I need to do to increase my score to Silver (not on a single asset,
but across the "range" of content - a.k.a.pages - scoped by your
conformance claim) versus Gold?

Do you get the same number of points for ensuring that the language of the
page has been declared (which to my mind is the easiest SC to meet) - does
providing the language of the document have the same impact on users as
ensuring that Audio Descriptions are present and accurate? If (like me) you
believe one to be far more important than the other, how many points do
either requirement start with (as a representation of "perfect" for that
requirement)? For that matter, do we count up or down in our scoring
(counting up = minimal score that improves, counting down = maximum score
that degrades)?

(ProTip: I'd also revisit the MAUR
<https://www.w3.org/TR/media-accessibility-reqs/> for ideas on how to
improve your score for Accessible Media, which is more than just captions
and audio description).

Then, of course, is the conundrum of "page scoring" versus "site scoring",
where a video asset is (likely) displayed on a "page", and perhaps there
are multiple videos on multiple pages, with accessibility support ranging
from "Pretty good" on one example, to "OMG that is horrible" on another
example... how do we score that on a site-level basis? If I have 5 videos
on my site, and one has no captions, transcripts or Audio Descriptions
(AD), two have captions and no AD or transcripts, one has captions and a
transcript but no AD, and one has all the required bits (caption, AD,
transcript)... what's my score? Am I Gold, Bronze, or Silver? Why?

And if I clean up 3 of those five videos above, but leave the other two
as-is, do I see an increase in my score? If yes, by how much? Why? Do I get
more points for cleaning up the video that lacks AD *and* transcript versus
not as many points for cleaning up the the video that just needs audio
descriptions? Does adding audio descriptions accrue more points than just
adding a transcript? Can points, as numeric values, also include decimal
points? (i.e. 16.25 'points' out of a maximum number available of 25)? Is
this the path we are on?

*Scoring is *everything** if we are moving to a Good, Better, Best model
for all of our web accessibility conformance reporting. Saying you are at
"Silver", without knowing explicitly how you got there will be a major
hurdle that we'll need to be able to explain.

It is for these reasons that I have volunteered to help work on the
conformance model, as I am of the opinion that all the other migration work
will eventually run into this scoring issue as a major blocker: no matter
which existing SC I consider, I soon arrive at variants of the questions
above (and more), all related to scalability, techniques, impact on
different user-groups, and our move from page conformance reporting to site
conformance reporting, and a sliding scale of "points" that we've yet to
tackle - points that will come to represent Bronze, Silver and Gold.

JF


On Fri, Jun 21, 2019 at 12:53 PM Hall, Charles (DET-MRM) <
Charles.Hall@mrm-mccann.com> wrote:

> I understand the logical parallel.
>
>
>
> However, my understanding (perhaps influenced by my own intent) of the
> point system is not directly proportional to the number of features
> (supported by methods) added or by the difficulty associated with adding
> them, but instead based on meeting functional needs. In this example,
> transcription, captioning and audio description (recorded) may all be
> implemented but still only have sufficient points to earn silver. While
> addressing the content itself to be more understandable by people with
> cognitive issues or intersectional needs would be required for sufficient
> points to earn gold. The difference being people and not methods.
>
>
>
> Am I alone in this view?
>
>
>
>
>
> *Charles Hall* // Senior UX Architect
>
>
>
> charles.hall@mrm-mccann.com
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> *From: *Alastair Campbell <acampbell@nomensa.com>
> *Date: *Friday, June 21, 2019 at 12:01 PM
> *To: *Silver Task Force <public-silver@w3.org>
> *Subject: *[EXTERNAL] Conformance and method 'levels'
> *Resent-From: *Silver Task Force <public-silver@w3.org>
> *Resent-Date: *Friday, June 21, 2019 at 12:01 PM
>
>
>
> Hi everyone,
>
>
>
> I think this is a useful thread to be aware of when thinking about
> conformance and how different methods might be set at different levels:
>
> https://github.com/w3c/wcag/issues/782
> <https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=https-3A__github.com_w3c_wcag_issues_782&d=DwMGaQ&c=Ftw_YSVcGmqQBvrGwAZugGylNRkk-uER0-5bY94tjsc&r=FbsK8fvOGBHiAasJukQr6i2dv-WpJzmR-w48cl75l3c&m=qRlBlL2XbaOAr9ZQ1gk036BFzRHfv3et7ZuRCfnYttk&s=81tZlSYylHRs1Awy147BMGnUzy0MuO6s7Qk5IO0FhoU&e=>
>
>
>
> It is about multimedia access, so the 1.2.x section in WCAG 2.x. You might
> think that it is fairly straightforward as the solutions are fairly cut &
> dried (captions, transcripts, AD etc.)
>
>
>
> However, the tricky bit is at what level you require different solutions.
>
>
>
> If you had a guideline such as “A user does not need to see in order to
> understand visual multimedia content”, then Patrick’s levelling in one of
> the comments
> <https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=https-3A__github.com_w3c_wcag_issues_782-23issuecomment-2D504038948&d=DwMGaQ&c=Ftw_YSVcGmqQBvrGwAZugGylNRkk-uER0-5bY94tjsc&r=FbsK8fvOGBHiAasJukQr6i2dv-WpJzmR-w48cl75l3c&m=qRlBlL2XbaOAr9ZQ1gk036BFzRHfv3et7ZuRCfnYttk&s=eQu0fdZeTflKCDpdR_3mguGA09aq52UmWnQTBdPRhjE&e=>
> makes sense:
>
>    - Bronze: EITHER provide AD or transcript
>    - Silver: provide AD and transcript
>    - Gold: Provide live transcript or live AD.
>
>
>
> I raise this as if you read the thread, you’ll see how the levels impacted
> the drafting of the guidelines, and I think we’ll have a similar (or more
> complex?) dynamic for the scoring in Silver, and how methods are drafted.
>
>
>
> Kind regards,
>
>
>
> -Alastair
>
>
>
> --
>
>
>
> www.nomensa.com
> <https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=http-3A__www.nomensa.com_&d=DwMGaQ&c=Ftw_YSVcGmqQBvrGwAZugGylNRkk-uER0-5bY94tjsc&r=FbsK8fvOGBHiAasJukQr6i2dv-WpJzmR-w48cl75l3c&m=qRlBlL2XbaOAr9ZQ1gk036BFzRHfv3et7ZuRCfnYttk&s=KYOhqBbA2ZqPfWqucl5pHqD50APEkM1wkeBHHBrRswc&e=>
> / @alastc
>
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-- 
*John Foliot* | Principal Accessibility Strategist | W3C AC Representative
Deque Systems - Accessibility for Good
deque.com