Re: ERT Action Item: Use Case Scenarios for EARL

I agree, of course.
One detail: Judy (in a private communication) mentioned that we probably 
need to devise a new logo, as the old one is already in place in some 
many website that it is unreasonable to ask people to provide an earl 
report to justify its posting.


And I have one comment regarding Carlos' answer
 >I agree with the idea of EARL report(s) as a more articulated and
 >complete way to communicate that the website is accessible to a certain
 >extent, the problem is that EARL is a machine readable language and 
 >it's not intended to be readable for people.

Right. But, as some of scenarios suggests, there could be services that 
would allow end users to load, merge, compare different earl reports. 
The same service could translate into more or less plain English the 
content of the report.
A skeptical user could then feed this service with the earl report 
attached to the logo and compare that report with the pages that she/he 
is looking at; or just upload the service with a new report produced by 
her/his preferred testing system and compare the two.

         Giorgio

Shadi Abou-Zahra wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> The idea is not to create a new logo but rather to provide a mechanism
> to supplement the logo with an EARL report of what has been tested.
> Browsers or search engines could then also process this information.
> 
> Of course, like the logos, these EARL reports may be outdated, over
> claimed, or simply false (policing their proper usage is a different
> issue and out of scope for this WG). However, EARL reports would provide
> more credibility and granularity than the logos (e.g. "I've tested these
> checkpoints, therefore I claim Level-? conformance" or "Except for these
> ? checkpoints, I have passed all other checkpoints for conformance
> Level-?" etc).
> 
> We would need to work out a bunch of details of how to bind EARL reports
> to the Web pages but that shouldn't be too difficult (we can pick out a
> few ideas from RSS for example).
> 
> What do people think of the overall idea?
> 
> Regards,
>   Shadi
> 
> 
> -----Original Message-----
> From: public-wai-ert-request@w3.org On Behalf Of Carlos Iglesias
> Sent: Monday, April 04, 2005 12:59
> To: Giorgio Brajnik; Charles McCathieNevile
> Cc: Johannes Koch; public-wai-ert@w3.org
> Subject: RE: ERT Action Item: Use Case Scenarios for EARL
> 
> 
> 
>  
> 
> I agree with the idea of EARL report(s) as a more articulated and
> complete way to communicate that the website is accessible to a certain
> extent, the problem is that EARL is a machine readable language and it's
> not intended to be readable for people.
> 
> IMO this is the reason for not to use it in "a new accessibility
> conformity logo" instead the one that is usually linked to
> http://www.w3.org/WAI/WCAG1A-Conformance.html.en due to this claim is
> visible for all web users and EARL is for developers, not for web users.
> 
> Regards,
> 
> CI.
> 
> 
> 
> 
>>-----Mensaje original-----
>>De: Giorgio Brajnik [mailto:giorgio@dimi.uniud.it] 
>>Enviado el: viernes, 01 de abril de 2005 10:08
>>Para: Charles McCathieNevile
>>CC: Carlos Iglesias; Johannes Koch; public-wai-ert@w3.org
>>Asunto: Re: ERT Action Item: Use Case Scenarios for EARL
>>
>> >> Johannes said
>> >>
>> >>> So the EARL report has to be created and linked to the logo.
>> >>> It will not be a link to some on-the-fly test like with  
>>
>>>>>HTML/CSS validation.
>>
>> >>
>> >>
>> >> And so we will have a link to some static EARL report 
>>(probably  >> incomplete and not updated) which doesn't add 
>>nothing new compared to  >> the current static claim text.
>>
>>The fact is that the EARL report is (necessarily) a static 
>>file, that refers to a snapshot of the website.
>>But the same is true though for the posting of the 
>>conformance logo, or any other sort of accessibility claim 
>>*about the website*. The only way out is to claim something 
>>about the processes that govern the evolution of the website 
>>(authoring, changing, publishing), which I think is beyond our scope.
>>
>>In my view the EARL report(s) is simply a more articulated 
>>way to communicate that the website (at a certain moment in 
>>time, and a certain set of pages and their contents -- i.e. 
>>time and space) is accessible to a certain extent.
>>
>>I agree completely with Chaals.
>>
>>Best regards
>>         Giorgio
>>
>>Charles McCathieNevile wrote:
>>
>>>On Fri, 01 Apr 2005 00:37:33 +1000, Carlos Iglesias 
>>><carlos.iglesias@fundacionctic.org> wrote:
>>>
>>>
>>>>Johannes said
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>>So the EARL report has to be created and linked to the logo.
>>>>>It will not be a link to some on-the-fly test like with HTML/CSS 
>>>>>validation.
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>And so we will have a link to some static EARL report (probably 
>>>>incomplete and not updated) which doesn't add nothing new 
>>
>>compared to 
>>
>>>>the current static claim text.
>>>
>>>
>>>In this worst case (crappy tools used stupidly) we will 
>>
>>have a link to 
>>
>>>a  report that once justified what was claimed. Even this is an 
>>>improvement,  as it lets us see the basis for the original 
>>
>>claim. If 
>>
>>>we set a minimal  set of properties for EARL (see my response to 
>>>Giorgio) we would kow  things like when the page apparently 
>>
>>met some 
>>
>>>requirement, according to  whom. Lots more than with the 
>>
>>current use of a logo alone.
>>
>>>Tools like AccMonitor, that cover very large websites 
>>
>>monitoring many 
>>
>>>aspects daily, could readily produce daily updates for whatever is 
>>>tested.  This in fact showsone of the possible benefits of 
>>
>>EARL - it 
>>
>>>become easy to  analyse what is going wrong across a site, using 
>>>output from a variety of  QA tools (accessibility testing, guided 
>>>manual testing, validation and  other stuff). That isn't 
>>
>>specific to 
>>
>>>EARL, it is the value of a  standardised reporting language in 
>>>general. Just that there aren't any  with real adoption at 
>>
>>the moment...
>>
>>>cheers
>>>
>>>Chaals
>>>
>>
> 
>

Received on Monday, 4 April 2005 11:33:16 UTC