Re: Following properly documented existing procedures - A hypothetical question?

Dear Alistair,

In your hypothetical (and indeed in any practical) case - if an evaluator 
uses WCAG-EM and as a result made a conformance claim then any one else 
evaluating the same page by whatever method should arrive at a similar 
conclusion and thus be able to issue a similar conformance claim.

Remember that we are issuing claims for conformance to the guidelines. The 
existence or not of any *particular* technique is not relevant - so long as 
some technique has been used to ensure compliance. For example it does not 
matter whether the engineer has used the <label> or <label for="xx"> 
technique to tie the instruction to the input field so long as whichever is 
used is used correctly. So if the first evaluator finds that the <label> 
element has been used correctly to surround both the instruction and input 
field the second evaluator has to do the same. The second evaluator cannot 
say that the page fails because the <label for="xx"> technique has not been 
used. The important thing is that one of the appropriate techniques has been 
used.

WCAG-EM codifies a procedure which, if followed, will give consistent 
results. However other procedures should give similar results, though 
probably not as well documented or traceable.

Regards
Richard



-----Original Message----- 
From: Alistair Garrison
Sent: Monday, November 18, 2013 4:54 PM
To: Eval TF
Subject: Following properly documented existing procedures - A hypothetical 
question?

Dear All,

A hypothetical question.

Scene-setting:

A qualified person has evaluated a single web page and has made a report - 
properly documenting all things asked for in the WCAG-EM.  They tested the 
sufficient techniques used by the developers, and all relevant failure 
criteria. They have found no issues in the web content in the web page. 
Based on their report (but as a separate additional activity to the WCAG-EM) 
they have gone on to make a proper WCAG 2.0 conformance claim for the single 
web page.

I have been asked to evaluate the web page above.  I find the claim, and the 
supporting evidence.

My question is this - "Am I honour bound to follow the procedure they have 
documented?"

The thought in my head is yes - that I should follow their procedure if it 
is properly documented.  I would of course check all relevant failure 
conditions, but if I didn't follow their procedure and started to test the 
page using tests from sufficient techniques I've chosen (which have not been 
used to develop the web content) I might find a failure or two - just 
because they have done things differently.

Any thoughts on the above would be good, as we might have to mention the 
necessity to follow properly documented existing procedures when 
re-evaluating web pages somewhere in our document.

All the best

Alistair

Richard Warren
Technical Manager
Website Auditing Limited (Userite)
http://www.website-accessibility.com

Received on Monday, 18 November 2013 20:21:39 UTC