Re: The challenge of using Making Content Usable as a protocol

Apologies, I didn’t catch that I emailed Michael Cooper rather than Michael Gower.

Take 2.

From: "Bradley-Montgomery, Rachael" <rmontgomery@loc.gov>
Date: Friday, June 17, 2022 at 2:13 PM
To: Michael Cooper <cooper@w3.org>
Cc: "public-wcag3-protocols@w3.org" <public-wcag3-protocols@w3.org>
Subject: The challenge of using Making Content Usable as a protocol

Hello Mike (protocols group ccd),

You asked today about why I felt Making Content Usable was not a good protocol.  This was discussed at a meeting a few months ago but I thought explaining via email could save some meeting time.  I believe that using Making Content Usable as a sample protocol raises concerns and is a poor choice for arguing / presenting protocol ideas.

Making Content Usable is an extremely complex document that includes multiple point of guidance at different scopes and levels of testability/measurability.

If you remove just the objectives with none of the design patterns and use those as heuristics for a heuristic review, then that new document may be a protocol, but saying that all the design patterns underneath those objectives should be put together as a protocols oversimplifies the contents. Some of the design patterns are already in WACG 2.0-2.2 as SC so treating them as a protocol would reduce the level that COGA guidance is included in WCAG rather than increasing it.

Parts of Making Content Usable could and likely should be treated as a protocol. COGA has a subgroup working on breaking out the clear language design pattern into different test types.  A plain language review is a potential protocol that could be used to support the Clear Language Design Pattern under the Use Clear and Understandable Content Objective. Other parts of the Clear Language design pattern are testable with high interrater reliability.  Please note that clear language is 3 levels down in the document structure which reenforces the complexity that is being oversimplified. Treating the entire document as a protocol potentially removes the need to treat the more objective and testable parts as guidance that would fall within the main  WCAG 3 structure.

Building on that, placing the majority of guidance for supporting people with cognitive disabilities into a section of WCAG 3 that won’t likely be in the most basic levels of conformance (whatever those end up looking like) continues the discrimination that is unintentionally baked into WCAG 2. We would like to make sure that  WCAG 3 avoids repeating the AAA situation all over again.

I hope that helps clarify and leads to a more productive way forward.

Kind regards,

Rachael


Rachael Bradley Montgomery, PhD
Digital Accessibility Architect
Library of Congress
Email: rmontgomery@loc.gov<mailto:rmontgomery@loc.gov>