Re: What if Silver didn't have levels?

I hope Silver will be simpler than WCAG, not more complicated... the
currently discussed point system concerns me because it seems more
complicated than our current conformance model...  Of course it could be
based on the idea that you have to get more complicated in order to truly
simplify something...  I'll be interested to see what emerges...

If you flatten the structure away from the 3 levels then we'd need a
separate place to put the types of requirements that we previously had in
AAA (SC in WCAG, Methods in Silver), which although they were often good
ideas they were place in AAA for a reason, possibly for one of the
following:

-  context dependent, and in some contexts they could make a site less
accessible.
-  couldn't apply across languages
-  couldn't apply across technologies (or couldn't be scoped to, say,
markup languages)
- *really hard to do* and not practical across organizations
- not a mature solution yet, not well supported by AT, or no current AT to
make use of it
- couldn't be tested with assurance (In silver that might mean they are not
"measurable")

Perhaps there could be a separate Best Practices doc for those types of
things.

Cheers,
David MacDonald



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On Wed, Oct 16, 2019 at 5:44 AM Léonie Watson <lwatson@tetralogical.com>
wrote:

> On 16/10/2019 09:44, Alastair Campbell wrote:
> > Interesting thought, and I agree with some aspects like:
> >    > The "good", "better", "best" model is problematic:
> >    > * The levels are effectively arbitrary, and they're inconsistent
> depending on the nature of your disability/disabilities.
> >    > What if we just used a single continuous scale, let's say for the
> purposes of this discussion from 0 to 100, without defining "good",
> "better", "best" steps along the way?
> >
> > However, I think one important role WCAG has had is setting the minimum
> bar at a level regulators can use. I.e. These criteria are important and we
> got consensus that they are feasible for everyone to tackle.
> >
> > (Noting a couple of exceptions where Canada & the EU have removed things
> like live captions / audio desc.)
>
> Without disagreeing with your general point that W3C sets a benchmark
> based on consensus and feasibility, it's not clear how dependably that
> benchmark is used in practice. Noting that the information for Section
> 508 is out of date, the WAI laws and policies page notes that of 40 laws
> and policies around the world, 23 are either derivatives or do not
> reference WCAG at all [2].
>
> >
> > With that in mind, if there is a 0 - 100 score, how about having one
> level?
> >
> > For sake of argument, that level could be 60%, but then scoring more
> looks better.
> >
> > Displayed like the Chrome Devtools where it goes green above a certain
> point, and people look for how to increase the points [1].
> >
> This would be an improvement over multiple levels, but it still
> perpetuates the "minimum necessary" problem.
>
> > I still think (but haven't had time to work on this) that it would be
> best to start at 100 and take away points for barriers, but in either
> direction I think Silver should set a base level.
> >
>
> I like this idea a lot. What if the base level was 100, and we evaluated
> conformance in reverse - how far off base level a product is?
>
>
> > It would also be important to have some guidelines (e.g. flashes) that
> instantly limit your score to under the level, they have to be dealt with
> to get to that passing level.
>
> Léonie
> >
> > Cheers,
> >
> > -Alastair
> >
> > 1] https://developers.google.com/web/tools/lighthouse/v3/scoring
> [1] https://www.w3.org/WAI/policies/
>
> >
>
> --
> Director @TetraLogical
>
>