Re: ERT Action Item: Use Case Scenarios for EARL

Ooops. /me turns brain on properly.

Summary, I agree with Carlos about what people want at the end, but I  
think that EARL is actually more helpful in making it happen than he  
suggests (and I am not sure what the practical alternatives are, either).

To make a claim that some page is good for people with cognitive  
disabilities, you need some justification. The feedback from most  
disability groups is pretty clear that while complete conformance to all  
WCAG checkpoints is a good thing (this effectively shows from the results  
used by the DRC as the basis of their UK report too, although they then  
said pretty much the exact opposite) there is virtualy no group that needs  
all WCAG checkpoints to be met in order for the page to be accessible to  
them.

Likewise, the levels of conformance are designed as a rough guide to  
meeting needs across the board, in terms of seriousness, not as something  
that matches the needs of a particular user or group of users.

So to make a claim that a page is good for people with cognitive  
disabilities, you base it on what? Presumably that it meets a bunch of  
requirements specific to the needs of people with cognitive disabilities.  
Where do you get that list of requirements? One place a lot of people look  
is in WCAG. They don't need the whole thing, but they want a bunch of  
tests.

On the other hand, for people who are blind, there is a different set of  
requirements. SOme of them overlap, many are different. All of them (if  
WCAG 2 is done right) will be covered in WCAG 2. (As far as I can tell  
WCAG 1 is still the best single source available, although as we all know  
there are some interpretation problems where different people understand  
different things from the same document).

And so on for other groups of users.

So the easiest way to test suitability for a single group is probably to  
do it as a special-purpose job. But the easiest way to test for two or  
three different user profiles at once is to seperate the individual tests  
out from the profiles, so that you don't repeat tests which are difficult  
(for example, manual verification that text is clear and accurate) when  
you want results for a different profile.

To answer your second question: No, not all people with disabilities know  
of WCAG. But I think it is better known, in general, than any similar  
document. And it seems like a good basis to work from. (Certainly I have  
not seen many people claiming to simply ignore it and start again from  
scratch, or even claiming that that would be a better approach for general  
accessibility). If WCAG 2 is done properly, I think it will be an even  
more fundamental document than WCAG 1 is now. And even more useful. We  
have an opportunity to build tools that can take advantage of this to make  
better accessibility for users (which is after all the real goal :-)

Cheers

Chaals

On Tue, 05 Apr 2005 17:52:08 +1000, Charles McCathieNevile  
<charles@sidar.org> wrote:

> On Tue, 05 Apr 2005 02:53:24 +1000, Shadi Abou-Zahra <shadi@w3.org>  
> wrote:
>
>>
>> Hi Carlos,
>>
>>> A - Just a claim that says "This page is accesible for people with
>>> cognitive disabilities".
>>>
>>> B - Detailed info about the WCAG checkpoints the page conforms.
>>>
>>> IMO the answer is A. Do you think that most of the people with
>>> disabilities know the WCAG?
>>
>> What about if browsers would support the user preferences such as "do
>> not display pages with flickering content" or "use high contrast style
>> sheets for pages with low color contrast"?
>
> Right. I think users with cognitive disabilities are going to be  
> uninterested in both A and B. In the case of people with severe  
> disabilities (the kind of people Jonathan Chetwynd used to work with,  
> they are going to want something that says "this is good for me" which  
> somebody assisting them will set up...
>
> cheers
>
> Chaals

-- 
Charles McCathieNevile                      Fundacion Sidar
charles@sidar.org   +61 409 134 136    http://www.sidar.org

Received on Tuesday, 5 April 2005 13:06:10 UTC