RE: ERT Action Item: Use Case Scenarios for EARL

Hi,
 
I agree with the necessity to have an alternative to allowing websites
to 'self-endorse' their own work with the use of a WAI logo.
 
>From what I can see of this suggested process, it does not appear to
incorporate the human interaction which is necessary for the validation
of any accessible website. 
 
Furthermore, there will never be a tool that validates every check point
sufficiently to assure a website owner that they have made all
reasonable adjustments according to the DDA legislation in their
respective country. For example, it is not possible to measure the
effectiveness of alt tags, nor will it ever be possible. Consider the
misuse of Bobby; too many people already assume that their website is
accessible if Bobby passes it, but yet this tool only checks that alt
attributes are present. 
 
Furthermore, with the speed at which gateways to the Internet are
growing - i.e. handheld devices such as mobile phones and PDAs etc., an
enormous amount of time and resource would be required to integrate
every API and validation tool with such an interface. With the current
technological advances in the Mobile industry, growth in this area over
the next 12 months is going to surpass any growth spurts till date.
 
Lastly and more importantly, it is vital that auditors include as many
people with disabilities as possible to ensure they provide real use
scenarios that may not be picked up by non-handicapped people or tools.
The Disability Rights Commission (DRC) in the UK produced an official
report following their investigation into web accessibility. I'm unable
to locate the report online but will gladly forward the document to
anyone who requests it. A direct quote; "This report demonstrates that
most websites are inaccessible to many disabled people and fail to
satisfy even the most basic standards for accessibility recommended by
the World Wide Web Consortium. It is also clear that compliance with the
technical guidelines and the use of automated tests are only the first
steps towards accessibility: there can be no substitute for involving
disabled people themselves in design and testing, and for ensuring that
disabled users have the best advice and information available about how
to use assistive technology, as well as the access features provided by
Web browsers and computer operating systems."
 
I would recommend a similar process as used by the Internet's most
recognised 'certified' brand, VeriSign. I believe it is down to the
validator/auditor to develop a date stamped one page document that
describes what has been tested at a high-level. The reader of this
document should in time, have the confidence to believe in the processes
that were followed by the Auditor at the backend and not concern
themselves of every test case scenario.
 
Kind regards,
Paul
 
 
-----Original Message-----
From: public-wai-ert-request@w3.org
[mailto:public-wai-ert-request@w3.org] On Behalf Of Shadi Abou-Zahra
Sent: 04 April 2005 12:15
To: public-wai-ert@w3.org
Subject: Re: ERT Action Item: Use Case Scenarios for EARL
 
 
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
> > 
>