Mini Market Survey for Evaluation Description Language

We need to decide how much effort to put into the Evaluation Description 
Language (EDL) or the extended version, Evaluation and Repair Language 
(EARL) suggested 
in  (http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/w3c-wai-er-ig/2000Dec/0031.html)

Info on EDL and EARL are on recent threads on this list, plus Sean's EDL 
overview at http://infomesh.net/edl/, and Len's user scenarios at 
http://www.w3.org/WAI/ER/IG/earl.html

So lets have a mini market survey, starting with this list.  I'd like to 
especially welcome lurkers into this discussion, since you-all are some of 
the main potential customers!

These first questions are addressed to end users:

1. If you evaluate web sites  how useful would it be to
- combine results from two or more tools?
- have results in an XML/RDF format that would enable you to create custom 
reports (assuming tools to help write the transforms were available)

2. If you develop web sites: how useful would it be to
- input the results into a web site authoring tool, so the authoring tool could
     . flag accessibility issues specified by EARL in the tools display of 
the site and code
     . allow you to accept or reject any suggested changes in the page 
(assuming such changes were included in the
        EARL output)?

For example, the EARL file might have been produced by a system test person 
who identified accessibility problems and suggested fixes such as suggested 
ALT text.  The authoring tool would point to places in the page where the 
issue occurs and give you the option to accept or reject the change, or 
make your own change.

3. If you do user testing of web sites how useful would it be for EARL to 
record testing steps (e.g. the series of user keypresses or higher level 
actions such as link activation) and the results that obtain?

The rest of the questions are directed at tool developers.  You may want to 
qualify your answers according to how much user demand there seems to be 
for items 1,2,3.

4. If  you (or your organization) develop web site authoring tools, how 
much interest would there be adding features to input EARL  so that users 
would have the capabilities described in (2)?

5. If you (or your organization) develops web site evaluation tools, how 
much interest would there be in
      a. outputting an EARL file
      b. inputting an EARL file from another tool to integrate with the 
info your tool picks up?

Len
--
Leonard R. Kasday, Ph.D.
Institute on Disabilities/UAP and Dept. of Electrical Engineering at Temple 
University
(215) 204-2247 (voice)                 (800) 750-7428 (TTY)
http://astro.temple.edu/~kasday         mailto:kasday@acm.org

Chair, W3C Web Accessibility Initiative Evaluation and Repair Tools Group
http://www.w3.org/WAI/ER/IG/

The WAVE web page accessibility evaluation assistant: 
http://www.temple.edu/inst_disabilities/piat/wave/

Received on Thursday, 14 December 2000 15:00:25 UTC