Re: Official WAI Report Form

At 17:27 1998/08/10 +0200, Daniel Dardailler wrote:
>
>I have what I think is a good work item for the ER IG.
>
>A summer student (Eric Cabrit) and I have been playing with the idea
>of a W3C/WAI "endorsed" report and tracking facility.
>
>http://www.w3.org/WAI/ER/report
>
>It's not operational yet, no active CGI behind the scene, and the
>message preview is just a template, but we're not far from having it
>working and most of the issues we have right now are I think issues
>for the IG to deal with, the WG just acting as an implementation
>pool.
>
>Feedback is needed on several things, like:
> - general idea of W3C/WAI providing such a report, good or bad,
>   useful or useless ?
Useful. Report back could point to Bobby for more details.

> - what to do with the data: public or not, at what stage ? (current
>   model suggest that the data is not public right away but can if
>   nothing is done - with no definition of "nothing")

We have no legal pressure, only "public good" persuasion. Notice to the
offender that we have added their site to the "inaccessible" public list,
and request they notify us when they've repaired the site for retest
might well work. EO could publicize this "inaccessible" public list URL.

> - how to manage the liability risk for W3C (spammer, angry/insulting
>   reporters, few mistakes, plain wrong report, etc)

Request the bad site either support their claim, or fix it.
 
> - maintenance of data: when to delete entries, forecast of usage (is
>   human tracking of reports possible?)

I suggest retest each month after first notification. Add comment into the
public "inaccessibility" list that it remains so with dates of tests (and
any sign of either improvement or further degeneration. This seems quite
schedulable for automated running. Remove URL when fixed (and send email
so indicating to the repairer, giving thanks for the work), and copy the
original reporter. Remove no longer valid URLs. 

Consider moving the URL to a "repaired site" list to indicate what effect 
our effort has had. (But continue retesting these monthly.) 

> - how to subset the Page Author guidelines for reference from this form?
> - need to refine the outgoing message wording and identify how many
>   translation to provide ? 
> 
Comments on current tracking page URL referred to above:

We may understand the jargon used in the form. Many site designers won't.

The subjective reactions by the reporter may indeed be technically wrong,
even though there was a clear problem worthy of reporting. We'd need
to evaluate them by a tool like Bobby. If we can see the reporter's point,
we may learn to improve our tools. The "Too Complex ..." is an example. 
A too-big table to permit memory of its outline may well pass all technical
tests, but is just to big for that reporter. The reporter may not have
access to a browser that exploits what can be provided to clarify the
table.

Problem:

One strength of Bobby worth emulating is for each of the problems the
link to a more detailed explanation.

Missing ALT on Image (or irrelevant)
I don't understand the parenthesized idea. HTML 4.0 requires ALT on all IMG. 

I don't know what "misuse of UL" is about?

Decouple "Moving/Blinking text and unexpected refresh"

"Page fubar and no Text-only" must be stated more clearly. Do you mean
"Page that depends on graphics has no text-only version"?

Browser Used:

List excludes Opera.

General Comment: this reporting form is nicely terse. Tabs step through it,
except for the browser used list.

Preview of Message to be sent Message should go both to the reported URL 
and copy back to the reporter. 

Regards/Harvey

Received on Monday, 10 August 1998 22:41:58 UTC