Re: [w3ctag/design-reviews] Accessibility conformance Testing (ACT) Rules Format 1.1 (Issue #977)

daniel-montalvo left a comment (w3ctag/design-reviews#977)

Sorry @matatk this slipped through.

I'll respond below.

> * The status quo: this document is specifying a format for writing ACT rules—in which case, the ACT rules documents themselves would count as implementations. We encourage you to ensure that the specification is precise enough to allow tools to be written that could verify, or 'lint', ACT rules against this spec—these linting tools would then form a test suite that ACT Rules authors could use to verify the rules documents they're writing.

In our view, commonly used accessibility checkers are already doing this job, although it'd be desirable that more vendors will join.

Currently, the process is as follows:

- The rules are considered "implementations" of this format specification.
- Everybody can write rules that conform with the format specification.
- There is a [set of rules](https://www.w3.org/WAI/standards-guidelines/act/rules/) written by the ACT Task Force. Some of them have already been approved by AGWG, others are proposed by the Task Force and will eventually be approved by the Working Group.

Although implementation guidance is always welcome, wouldn't be out of scope for the rules format document itself?

> * We also encourage you to publish a REC track document that aggregates the ACT rules as written by the CG—in which case the requirement for _them_ to mature on the REC track would be that accessibility testing tools embodying (or supporting) the rules would be required.

I am not clear on this point. Doesn't the  [set of rules](https://www.w3.org/WAI/standards-guidelines/act/rules/) mentioned above cover this already? In addition to this, there is also [Implementation pages](https://www.w3.org/WAI/standards-guidelines/act/implementations/) that cover how different automated, semi-automated, and manual tools have indeed implemented the rule set.

It's true these are not on Rec track because back in the day it was decided that they'll be more impactful if they're published as resources on the WAI website.

> * If you have a goal that manual testing tools should be able to load ACT rules, for humans to use in test procedures (which we encourage) then implementations would be accessibility testing tools that support the loading of ACT rules.
> * Some of the ACT rules could be checked entirely mechanically. It's possible that ways could be developed to achieve this that could be used (by a machine) directly, as part of projects such as [Playwright](https://playwright.dev/), [Cypress](https://www.cypress.io/), and/or [Web Platform Tests](https://web-platform-tests.org/) (which has a somewhat different focus). This would allow the rules (or rather the mechanical checks underpinning them) to be more widely adopted, so we encourage you to investigate this approach in future.

- This is certainly something that could be developed in the future. We have not explored yet how the rules could be used in the context of Playwright or Cipress.
- The group is currently exploring how test cases within rules can contribute to the current accessibility Web Platform Tests. For the moment it's mostly automated, manual, and semi-automated accessibility checkers which are implementing the test cases in the rules.
- There is also work on manual rules (rules that automated checkers cannot currently check by themselves) but these are still not approved by the Task Force, hence not published as Proposed to the AGWG Working Group.

The Task Force Would appreciate any comments if you think these additional pages and resource still don't cover the points you raise.

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