RE: [Conformance] Third Party Draft Updated

Sarah,

My concern is that an absolute requirement for accessible alternatives isn't achievable.

To take one example: what is the alternative to a copyright movie that lacks audio descriptions, where the copyright holder does not give permission for those to be added (and note, this is not a hypothetical)?  Another real-life example: real estate listings with 3D building walk-throughs (such as those from Matterport), where we haven't figured out what constitutes an accessible alternative (a room by room description doesn't give the equivalent information when the prospective buyer may be looking for specific things in the model that they describe or fails to add).

We do not yet have a proposal for whether or at what level this content should conform. But I think we have already crossed the threshold of accepting a certain amounts of less consequential content being inaccessible while still reaching the bronze conformance level (the oft cited ALT text in a footer). And the right answer for third-party content may well differ by the nature of the content. For example, our to be written guideline on multimedia content might explicitly score copyrighted media lacking audio descriptions differently than non-copyright media lacking audio descriptions, and differently again from user generated/provided media lacking audio descriptions (and my further still make a difference for media created after WVAG 3 is published, versus media from decades in the past). Meanwhile, that guideline might look at user generated media that was provided without captions from the user with further gradations: recognizing and scoring machine generated captions for user generated content differently than machine generated captions for content developed and owned by the site.

What we are trying to do at this stage is bring more nuance and thought around accessibility achievability for third-party content versus what we have today in WCAG 2.

Peter

From: Sarah Horton <sarah.horton@gmail.com>
Sent: Sunday, June 20, 2021 2:39 AM
To: Korn, Peter <pkorn@lab126.com>
Cc: Sajka, Janina <sajkaj@amazon.com>; public-silver@w3.org; janina@sajka.net
Subject: RE: [EXTERNAL] [Conformance] Third Party Draft Updated


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Peter, thank you for clarifying your thoughts.

I am concerned about an approach to conformance for third-party content that allows WCAG conformance for inaccessible/not fully accessible content and services. This is counter to the user-first aims of WCAG 3.

Including requirements for alternatives to removing barriers, such as a phone number for ordering merchandise in the case of the scouts website, is an attempt to align conformance and meeting user needs.

Best,
Sarah



On Jun 19, 2021, at 9:01 PM, Korn, Peter <pkorn@lab126.com<mailto:pkorn@lab126.com>> wrote:

Sarah,

I am concerned about your item 3 below.  Both for reasons of scale, as well as the nature of the some inaccessible services, and in some cases controlling law, providing an accessible alternative may not be possible.

For item number two, I would go a little bit further: “strongly encouraged…“

Peter


On Jun 19, 2021, at 6:24 AM, Sarah Horton <sarah.horton@gmail.com<mailto:sarah.horton@gmail.com>> wrote:

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Thanks, Peter.

Do you think it makes sense to add something along those lines to the proposal? For example:

…this proposal attempts to develop the Conformance portion of more nuanced guidance for the web content publisher, who is asked to:

  1.  Clearly indicate to users where the 3rd party content is.
  2.  Encourage the providers of that third party content to make it fully accessible.
  3.  Provide the inaccessible/not fully accessible content or service through alternative methods.

On Jun 18, 2021, at 6:06 PM, Korn, Peter <pkorn@lab126.com<mailto:pkorn@lab126.com>> wrote:

Sarah, all,

I think it makes sense for a site to offer alternatives where they exist. Depending upon the nature of the inaccessible/not fully accessible third-party service, there may not be an alternative.

Thanks,

Peter

From: Sarah Horton <sarah.horton@gmail.com<mailto:sarah.horton@gmail.com>>
Sent: Friday, June 18, 2021 9:30 AM
To: Sajka, Janina <sajkaj@amazon.com<mailto:sajkaj@amazon.com>>
Cc: public-silver@w3.org<mailto:public-silver@w3.org>; janina@sajka.net<mailto:janina@sajka.net>
Subject: RE: [EXTERNAL] [Conformance] Third Party Draft Updated

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Hi, Janina.

What about requiring authors (web content publishers) to provide alternatives for inaccessible third party content? For example, in Use Case B, where the page has a statement about third-party payment processing above the embedded inaccessible author arranged service content (PaymentFriend), the statement could include details about other methods to purchase merchandise, which the authors (local scouting group) would be responsible for providing.

Thanks for all the great work on this!

Best,
Sarah




On Jun 18, 2021, at 3:55 PM, Sajka, Janina <sajkaj@amazon.com<mailto:sajkaj@amazon.com>> wrote:


Colleagues:

I believe I’ve captured the edits we agreed during our teleconference of 17 June, namely:


  *   Added to the (introductory) Problem Statement to indicate our goals in this document up top;
  *   Added Wilco’s language (and made a more definitive assertion) in the Editor’s Note at the top of the Steps to Conform section;
  *   Added a phrase to the examples in the last step of User Generated to point to outcomes (rather than further enumerating types of content prompting).
Please provide additional edits and suggestions. I will monitor here over the next few days as we prepare for our presentation Tuesday.

For convenience our draft is at:

https://www.w3.org/WAI/GL/task-forces/silver/wiki/Proposal_on_Third_Party_Content


Best,

Janina



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Janina Sajka
Accessibility Standards Consultant
sajkaj@amazon.com<mailto:sajkaj@amazon.com>