RE: Concerns about not covering full website

Hi Detlev, all,

Yes, it was an interesting discussion this afternoon about the scope of an evaluation :-). 

This afternoon we discussed the possibility to use the WCAG2.0 Evaluation Methodology not only for full website evaluation, but also for parts of websites. In the current version the evaluation focuses on the full website with a possibility to exclude parts from the scope.  If we want to include evaluating parts of a website (like only the WAI part of W3C or only the BAD website) this should be added in the scope section. 

Today a different approach was proposed: We look at it the other way around: the Conformance claim determines the scope. 

This approach is very flexible and makes it possible to claim conformance for portions of websites, possibly even for technologies or collections of pages or single pages. This makes the Methodology much more flexible for website owners who are not always interested in evaluation of the full website. This is a change to the requirements document but it will provide support for requests by website owners and evaluators wishing to just look at a specific part of a website.

I would propose that we do a short discussion this week on this approach. Do we leave the scope completely free for the site owner to decide?

Kindest regards,

Eric



________________________________________
Van: Detlev Fischer [fischer@dias.de]
Verzonden: donderdag 26 januari 2012 17:16
Aan: EVAL TF
Onderwerp: Concerns about not covering full website

Hi everyone,

I think a lot of the heat in the disacussion we just had may be down to
a misunderstanding.

Eric, no one says that the evaluation of an entire webiste is not a good
idea or should not be done. If a site owner wants it done, that's fine.

If however, a site owner wants to look at a particular section (that can
be many pages), it should be possible to evaluate just that. It's also a
cost issue. Any conformance claim must make that limited scope perfectly
clear, preferably by binding the evaluation to a set of URLs.

Increasingly, sites have many different sections, like user generated
content. No sane person would claim even A-Level conformance for a wiki
or bulletin board that allows unstructured text input. It would fail SC
1.3.1 in minutes or hours. That's why it is more straightforward to be
able to include things even if they are important processes on a site.

Working out a sampling approach still makes sense even if you look at
parts of a site - and also if you evaluate the whole site.

Regards,
Detlev

Received on Friday, 27 January 2012 00:14:14 UTC