Re: Levels of Conformance discussed on April 10, April 17, 2020

Sorry, Jake. I should’ve specified that. We had this discussion in the last 2 Friday meetings, which consist of a relatively small number of participants.

About 3 – 5 levels: Likert scales (a common usability metric) usually consist of 5 points. This would keep Silver consistent with already accepted norms.

In terms of consensus, I didn’t mean to imply that it was decided on. My bad. I should’ve been more articulate. I just mean that it had wide agreement during the discussion. However, this is definitely something that should be discussed with the wider group, and decided on eventually through a survey probably.

From: jake abma <jake.abma@gmail.com>
Date: Monday, April 20, 2020 at 5:38 AM
To: David Fazio <dfazio@helixopp.com>
Cc: Jeanne Spellman <jspellman@spellmanconsulting.com>, Silver Task Force <public-silver@w3.org>
Subject: Re: Levels of Conformance discussed on April 10, April 17, 2020

Hi David,

Thank you for the update and good to see this is discussed multiple times.
I see the value of different levels and also see the value of sometimes have 3, sometimes 5 or even more depending on the tasks to evaluate and also the expertise of the evaluators in specific systems.

Sadly I wasn't present at the TF meeting, was this the Friday meeting?
The last sentence talk about consensus but consensus by whom exactly?

In general I see that for the WCAG WG 5 may be applicable and understandable, for the average WCAG user I question if 5 may be too much.
My first impression would be that 3, like: low, medium, high on severity would be enough to get a good score and good understanding of the average WCAG user.

Can the people present in the call show why 3 is not being enough before having consensus?
Might it be better to first have some data present for guidelines we can test before having consensus?

Cheers,
Jake


Op zo 19 apr. 2020 om 21:53 schreef David Fazio <dfazio@helixopp.com<mailto:dfazio@helixopp.com>>:
Jeanne asked me to send an email to the list about the conversation we have had about levels of conformance, on the last 2 calls. Please see below...

During the last 2 Silver TF meetings we discussed selecting a range of accessibility from inaccessible to good enough to superior. I suggested we benchmark off of neuropsychological evaluations since they run a myriad of comprehensive tests that rate on a similar scale to determine the functional capacity of individuals. John Foliot liked the idea, and suggested we select 5 levels (3 being not enough, 7 being too many). John also asked me provide insight on how many levels I’ve seen in neuropsyche evals, since I offered to use mine from over the years, as a benchmark. Over the last 24 years I have seen the following 9 levels, in various tests:
Impaired,

Mildly impaired,

Moderately impaired,

Severely impaired,

Average,

Low average,

High average,

Superior,

Very superior.

At the last Silver TF meeting there was consensus for John’s suggestion to select 5 levels.