RE: Checkpoint on testability

At 10:25 AM 12/22/2000 , William Loughborough wrote:
>At 10:04 AM 12/22/00 -0800, Kynn Bartlett wrote:
>>just to make a web accessibility evaluator's job easier.
>
>It's because the "accessibility evaluator" is not a distinct person from the "user". One aspect of using the Web is to be able to tell if a portion thereof is going to be accessible. One could use a tool to determine this if the testability information were included.

I disagree; there is no way to tell whether or not a portion of the
web is "going to be accessible" without trying to access it in some
manner.  I agree that users are de facto evaluators, but I am 
unconvinced that is the point of this checkpoint.  For example, in
the original proposal, there was reference to allowing read access
to scripts to determine accessibility -- reading through Perl scripts,
even apart from the privacy and security issues, is not something
which most users should be expected to do, but they -are- expected
to be able to judge if they can use the current page.

>It's a P2 simply because its absence makes "...difficult for people with disabilities to access the web" in the above sense. One thing about the Web (as distinct from particular Web chunks) that matters is being able to determine if a site will work for your circumstances. This can only be determined by an agent of yours if it's testable..

I disagree, because I believe that the only way to tell if a page
is usable is to attempt to use it.  If that is what you mean by
"testable" than this is a truism of making any sort of interface
accessible and does not mandate its own checkpoint.  If this is not
what you mean by testable then this checkpoint does not have any
effect on whether or not a site can be used.

If a "testability" requirement is necessary anywhere, it is in our
guidelines themselves, rather than as a meta-accessibility requirement
for the site.  As part of the conformance process there should be a
way to confirm whether or not a given conformance claim is accurate,
or to derive a conformance claim from site examination.

That is part of the conformance scheme and not a requirement on the
author; authors should not, for example, be expected to provide 
source material for scripts so that an outside party can "verify"
accessibility.

I don't see how this is a P2 barrier to access; it does not make it
more difficult to use a page if you are lacking information on
the accessibility (claimed or computed) of the page.  A page which
is perfectly accessible under WCAG 1.0 (say, it complies with all
priority 2 checkpoints) does not magically become harder to use if
you are unable to use an agent to confirm accessibility claims.

--Kynn

-- 
Kynn Bartlett  <kynn@idyllmtn.com>                    http://kynn.com/
Sr. Engineering Project Leader, Reef-Edapta       http://www.reef.com/
Chief Technologist, Idyll Mountain Internet   http://www.idyllmtn.com/
Contributor, Special Edition Using XHTML     http://kynn.com/+seuxhtml
Unofficial Section 508 Checklist           http://kynn.com/+section508

Received on Friday, 22 December 2000 16:23:10 UTC