RE: Call for Review: Website Accessibility Conformance Evaluation Methodology (WCAG-EM)

Thanks, very good progress!

We will try to announce it also despite our new spitted structure ;-)



See below my 15 comments... I put directly your functional-mailbox in copy



KR

François

--
François JUNIQUE (Policy & Project Officer)

Tel: +32 (0)2 29 -63846
Communications Networks, Content and Technology Directorate-General (DG CONNECT) - European Commission
before 1/7/2012 known as DG INFSO
Flagships (Excellence in Science) / Initiatives-phares
http://cordis.europa.eu/fp7/ict/programme/fet/flagship/ - http://www.facebook.com/FETFlagships - http://twitter.com/FETFlagships
[Future of Medicine? Knowledge Accelerator? Graphene? Guardian Angels? Human Brain? Robot Companions?
http://europa.eu/rapid/pressReleasesAction.do?reference=IP/11/530&format=HTML&aged=1&language=EN&guiLanguage=en]
Assistant: Rafaela OLIVEIRA LIMA (mailto:Rafaela.Oliveira-Lima@ec.europa.eu , tel: -90703) – Fax: -91749
Postal address: European Commission - Office BU33 6/50 - 1049 Brussels – BELGIUM
--
before 1/7/2012: ICT for Inclusion (ICT addressing Societal Challenges)
[including e-Accessibility and in particular web-accessibility]
previous Assistant: Laura IRIMIA (mailto:Laura.Irimia@ec.europa.eu , tel: -93918)

--------------
My personal comments:



1.       I really hope it will help industry to develop tools to support testers in this process

2.       I really hope it will help industry to develop semi-automatic / automatic tools to approach an as-low-as-possible human-resource-requirement in particular for the "1.b basic report" (btw I don’t like this naming – see below)

3.       "3.1.4 Step 1.d: Define the Context of Website Use" – still very generic and doesn’t provide real guidance in the case of public sites, which is essential in the context of the current legislative efforts in Europe

4.       "3.5 Step 5: Report the Evaluation Findings - basic report" – the description is rather confusing between being "global" and listing all the pages failing for each criteria. I see the dilemma but  maybe it could be more synthetic than listing the pages (also what about processes when staying on the "same" page), while it might be very useful to indicate the technology concerned.

5.       "3.5.2 Step 5.b: Provide an Accessibility Evaluation Statement (optional)" – point-1 is probably too global so many sites will just be marked as failing and point-7 so vague that of very little use… So the next optional step 5c should be encouraged… (even if some people don’t like it ;-)

6.       "3.5.3 Step 5.c: Provide a Performance Score (optional) " – very good start, but have the 3 modes been tested on some sites and are they useful, i.e. giving a synthetic view of the situation, or providing a distribution of errors? relation with the work done on metrics? does it contain reporting per technology used? what kind of harmonisation of score reporting is targeted by the TF (as required for Europe)? what are the specs for this in the TF, e.g. constraints such that allowing aggregation of scores when grouping (sub-)sites reporting?

7.       "3.5.4 Step 5.d: Provide Machine-Readable Reports (optional) " – extremely short text: what are the goals: "Basic Report", "Detailed Report", or "In-Depth Analysis"? for EARL and for meta-data? Will a meta-data format for perf-scores (if they were themselves harmonised) be proposed?

8.       "3.3 Step 3: Select a Representative Sample" – is the reliability of the approach verified? integrated in the process (e.g. via a possible iterative addition until the scoring is "stable")?

9.       Section 4.1 is not really clear (even if one can roughly guess the intention)

10.   Section 4.2 second paragraph is not really clear (why this is necessary)

11.   Section 4.3 is not so clear either, in particular when the accessibility is low and therefore the types of errors probably not homogeneously distributed

12.   Section 4.4 will require probably much more consideration in the future: an instantiation of the full methodology to this particular case (also I the context of my point 3 above) would be very useful

13.   I am not sure to understand the value of section 5 and even less when it seem to say that the steps are not ordered???

14.   Appendix-C: the 3 examples require careful reading to see the differences …

15.   " 2.5 Involving Users (Optional) " doesn’t really explain how what is noticed with real users has to be re-integrated in the criteria-oriented conformance assessment, without falling in the dilemma assessing real-accessibility versus guidelines conformance…



eof





-----Original Message-----
From: Shadi Abou-Zahra [mailto:shadi@w3.org]
Sent: Friday, September 21, 2012 2:23 AM
To: MARSELLA Marco (CNECT); JUNIQUE Francois (CNECT)
Cc: Eric Velleman
Subject: Call for Review: Website Accessibility Conformance Evaluation Methodology (WCAG-EM)



Dear Marco, Dear Francois,



As requested, please find below the formal announcement for an updated

Working Draft of W3C/WAI Website Accessibility Conformance Evaluation

Methodology (WCAG-EM), open for public comments until 20 October 2012.



This draft follows the same approach and framework developed for the

previously published First Public Working Draft. All sections are now

filled and we have done substantial improvements in many areas. We

anticipate several more refinements for the next "implementable" draft.



We have forwarded this announcement to eAccess+, STF416, and others that

may be interested in this work. Please feel free to circulate too.



Let us know if you have any questions.



Regards,

   Shadi





-------- Original Message --------

Subject:               Call for Review: Website Accessibility Conformance Evaluation

Methodology (WCAG-EM)

Date:     Thu, 20 Sep 2012 10:54:53 -0500

From:    Shawn Henry <shawn@w3.org<mailto:shawn@w3.org>>

To:          WAI Interest Group <w3c-wai-ig@w3.org<mailto:w3c-wai-ig@w3.org>>

CC:         Shadi Abou-Zahra <shadi@w3.org<mailto:shadi@w3.org>>, Eric Velleman

<e.velleman@bartimeus.nl<mailto:e.velleman@bartimeus.nl>>







Dear WAI Interest Group Participants,



WAI invites you to comment on the updated Working Draft of Website

Accessibility Conformance Evaluation Methodology (WCAG-EM) at:

     http://www.w3.org/TR/WCAG-EM/



Overview:

WCAG-EM describes an approach for evaluating how websites -- including

web applications and websites for mobile devices -- conform to Web

Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.0. It covers different

situations, including self-assessment and third-party evaluation. It is

independent of particular evaluation tools, web browsers, and assistive

technologies.



Draft:

This draft has proposed content for all sections. Now is a good time to

review it. We are particularly looking for feedback on the applicability

of this methodology in practice and for input on refining and expanding

the guidance provided. Specific questions are indicated with "Review

Note" in the draft.



Comments:

Please send comments on this draft document to the publicly archived

mailing list:

                public-wai-evaltf@w3.org<mailto:public-wai-evaltf@w3.org>

                by *20 October 2012*



Background:

WCAG-EM is developed by the WCAG 2.0 Evaluation Methodology Task Force

(Eval TF), a joint task force of the Web Content Accessibility

Guidelines Working Group (WCAG WG) and Evaluation and Repair Tools

Working Group (ERT WG). The Eval TF is introduced

at:<http://www.w3.org/WAI/ER/2011/eval/eval-tf>

It is a supporting resource for WCAG 2.0 and does not replace or

supersede it in any way. For an overview of WCAG,

see<http://www.w3.org/WAI/intro/wcag>

This work is developed with support of the EC-funded WAI-ACT Project

(IST 287725) described at:<http://www.w3.org/WAI/ACT/>

It is part of W3C WAI activities on web accessibility evaluation and

testing introduced at:<http://www.w3.org/WAI/ER/2011/eval/>



URI:

The first URI above goes to the latest version of the document. The

"dated" version of this draft

is:<http://www.w3.org/TR/2012/WD-WCAG-EM-20120920/>

The difference between these URIs are explained in Referencing and

Linking to WAI Guidelines and Technical Documents

at:<http://www.w3.org/WAI/intro/linking.html>



Please let us know if you have any questions. Thank you in advance for

your comments.



Feel free to circulate this message to other lists; please avoid

cross-postings where possible.



Regards,

~Shawn Lawton Henry, WAI Outreach

Eric Velleman, Eval TF Facilitator

Shadi Abou-Zahra, W3C/WAI Staff Contact