Extra normative level?

Hi everyone,

It was an interesting conversation on the normative/informative aspects in silver / WCAG 3, I just wanted to provide an example for consideration.

We have a sliding scale of granularity, from least granular to most granular:


  *   WCAG 2.x Principle (a categorisation tag)
  *   WCAG 2.x guideline
  *   Silver guideline
  *   WCAG 2.x Success criteria
  *   (Current informative line)
  *   Silver Getting started / WCAG 2.x Understanding
  *   Silver methods
  *   WCAG 2.x Techniques

My main points were that:

  *   'normative requirement' does not need to equal 'testable statement', they can be different things.
  *   The more content that is normative, the more that has to go through a more complex process.

So my suggestion was to add something concise between the guideline and method level.

Taking a concrete example, e.g. Visual contrast of text<https://raw.githack.com/w3c/silver/ED-draft=comments-changes-js/guidelines/index.html#visual-contrast-of-text>, the 'normative' bits could be something like:

2.3 Visual Contrast of Text
Provide sufficient contrast between foreground text and its background.
Text meets the Advanced Perceptual Contrast Algorithm unless it is incidental.

The last line could be behind a show/hide, or styled differently, or be in the top line of Getting started. The links would go to the evaluation tab and a definition of incidental. It could also be much longer if that was easier to understand.

Or for clear language:

2.2 Clear Language
Use clear language to make it easier for readers to understand.
Ensure that text content follows the principles for plain language by editing it to match, following a style guide, or testing and updating it.

I hashed that together from the "How" and the method information.

To address another issue around the complexity of language: If the normative language is not constrained by being a very concise testable statement it could be longer and easier to understand. Adjusting some of the 'how to' material could also be the solution, and marking that as normative.

Another aspect is that some 'normative requirements' could be process based, e.g. When creating or updating navigation a user-centred design approach is included. That might be a silver/gold (or whatever the terms are) criteria compared to WCAG 2.x, but I don't see that as a problem for 'normative requirements'.

Cheers,

-Alastair