Two comments Methodology doc

Ref: Editors Draft of Sept 4, 2012
http://www.w3.org/WAI/ER/conformance/ED-methodology-20120904

1. Refer: Under Scope of Applicability:The methodology defined by this document applies to full, self-enclosed websites.
Comment:
i. The title should be 'Scope' and not 'Scope of Applicability' I think.
ii. I believe the adjective 'full, self-enclosed' should be dropped. 
It is not used in WCAG 2 and this doc should not extend or suggest a different interpretation for conformance.
 
2. Comments:

With reference to 'sampling' in the  section on Scope:
Within the limits of time and budget  imposed by the client, and the tools at the auditor's disposal,  if an auditor can evaluate all pages, he should do so if preliminary evaluation suggests the need for this. 

An auditor is expected to exercise reasonable judgment in selecting the pages to be included in the sample and may rely on the website owner for guidance for understanding the website. 
In case the auditor is required to certify the website for accessibility, the certification should state this fact.
Analogy:
Financial / tax auditors too rely on sample-based audits. Where computer-assisted techniques can be employed, certain tests may be performed on the entire data.
The auditor certifies the financial statements based on the results of audit tests and the certification says so.
This does not mean that the financial data is completely free of errors etc. It means that the financial data may be considered free of "material" or significant errors and taken as a whole may be considered to be reliable.

In a limited sense, the same principle should apply to  a website accessibility audit.
I say 'limited', because financial auditors also audit transaction processing systems in the course of their review to ensure there are reasonable checks and balances so they can conclude that major errors / mistakes are unlikely to have passed through the system.   
Web accessibility auditors simply review the Web pages and source code and not the processes that produced the website unless contracted separately to do this as a consulting engagement.  

Sailesh Panchang
Tel 571-344-1765

Deque Systems
www.deque.com

Received on Tuesday, 11 September 2012 15:34:29 UTC