How to Report an Inaccessible Website

Ref: http://www.w3.org/WAI/EO/Drafts/responding

Great to see this revision! A couple of quick comments for now:

1. approach

I see in the minutes from today's telecon: "
Sharron: about attitude and try to remain courteous. Maybe people won't read all the detail. Something to say remain calm and courteous. Better response that way.
Jennifer: I agree with Sharron. Removed from the document Andrew?
Andrew: removed from this version.
shadi: has been toned down. We got comments that it was inappropriate to be told how to react.
Sharron: don't want to tell somebody how to feel.
Andrew: the reaction from some people was don't want to be told what to feel, when I feel angry."
"

Note that I agree that the document should not tell someone _how to feel_. However, I *do* think it is entirely appropriate for the document to provide guidance on tone of first approach. This can be said _not_ as this-is-how-you-should-do-it, _but instead_ as think-what-approach-will-get-the-best-results and when-attacked-people-get-defensive and people-want-to-help-especially-if-there-is-something-in-it-for-them.

Personally, I think that is *one of the most important points*. I'm looking forward to talking about this face-to-face next week.

(...maybe I do a blog post about this issue and we link to that instead of saying too much in this document?)

2. Overview box

The "Overview" box/section and the "Page Contents" are fairly redundant. What do you think of getting rid of the Page Contents box and integrating pertinent info in the Overview box? Is it clear enough that the links in the Overview box are in-page... hummm, maybe not...

If so, we'd just need to cover two things:
- add to the Overview a link to Sample E-mails - which is probably a good thing to do anyway, since that will likely be one of the more popular sections of the document.
- How about changing "Consider book-marking this page and passing it along to others." to "Use this page and share it with others." and link to http://www.w3.org/WAI/EO/Drafts/responding/#use

(Also, I think can delete "Some basic considerations for alerting website owners about accessibility barriers include:" - esp because right above it is "Encountering barriers caused by an inaccessible website? Here are some ideas to help you report the accessibility problems.")

Andrew - if you get chance, perhaps make up a version like this for discussion f2f?

3. e-mail subject lines

It occurred to me that e-mails will often go to an e-mail address that gets lots of spam. Therefore, I think we should add some brief guidance on making a subject line that is likely to get through automatic spam filtering *and* human skimming. Also, we should provide subjects for the sample emails.

(Perhaps "Problem with Acme website" is a good one?)

Question: Is there any other advice to limit these e-mails being caught in a spam filter? e.g., send to only one e-mail address or???

---

All for now. I'll read the doc on the airplane Sunday...

Best,
~Shawn


[1] http://www.w3.org/2009/10/30-eo-minutes

Received on Friday, 30 October 2009 20:36:25 UTC