Re: Checkpoint on testability

At 04:50 PM 12/21/00 -0800, Kynn Bartlett wrote:


>In other words, it may be hard for someone who is not using specific
>hardware/software/environments/preferences to confirm accessibility
>for someone who _is_, because different presentations are delivered.

This is what I was trying to address with the following example in X.4
quote
Positive Example: Two sites created from common data through different 
transformations, PROVIDED that the transformation rules are publically 
visible for validation.
unquote

In other words, its fine to provide different presentations to different 
hardware/software/environments/preferences if the orginal data, and the 
rules creating the different presentations are available to the tester.  In 
fact, to the extent the rules are machine readable, much or all of the 
validation could be done automatically.   The other extreme is an 
alternative version of a site that is created completly by hand and that 
structures the information in a different way... testing the equivalence of 
such a site is very labor consuming and hence costly.


>This seems a bit like a meta-issue rather than an actual accessibility
>issue; it doesn't actually affect the accessibility of the content
>but rather someone's ability to evaluate that accessibility.  I am not
>convinced that those are on the same level of requirement, or even
>that this -needs- to be included in our guidelines.

It's true that this is a different type of guideline and it's a legitimate 
question whether it's within scope of this particular document.  However, I 
think it's crucial that it be formally stated somewhere within WAI.

In the real world, requirements that are costly to test are tested 
inadequately or are ignored.

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 Friday, 22 December 2000 09:35:11 UTC