[TECH] Additional Use cases for navigating WCAG Documents

I took an action item at the 12, May 2004, Techniques Teleconference to 
come up with a few more use cases for navigating the WCAG documents.  I 
used the personas created by Tom Croucher (
http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/w3c-wai-gl/2003JulSep/0497.html) to 
create the following scenarios.  I have summarized the path through the 
documents at the end of each use case.  Many of these use cases map to 
scenarios that have already been proposed by David MacDonald and others 
(see http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/w3c-wai-gl/2004AprJun/0305.html 
and http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/w3c-wai-gl/2004AprJun/0333.html ). 
 Some illustrate fairly specific linking between each guideline and 
specific techniques or checklist items which may prove too difficult to 
implement.  The goal was to try and provide some more specific use cases 
to help evaluate the navigation.

food for thought, 
-becky



Mary is in her first year of college and is living away from home for the 
first time.  She is continually frustrated trying to use the University's 
web site to schedule lab time for her Chemistry class. The lab times are 
not fixed and she needs to schedule lab time each week.   In order to do 
this via the Scheduling web site she needs to navigate through a table of 
open lab times and select her first, second, and third choices for the 
week.  Mary has difficulty using a mouse and finds it difficult to select 
the checkboxes next to the open lab times using the keyboard.    Often she 
has to get her roommate to help her which is very frustrating. Mary would 
like to complain to the University about this problem but wants to 
understand the issues better.  One of her classmates told her about the 
W3C and WAI so she decided to investigate.  From www.w3c.org/WAI,  Mary 
sees Web Content Accessibility Guidelines and begins reading that 
document. Mary doesn't know much about specific web technologies but she 
uses the web everyday and finds the Guidelines enlightening.   She is 
particularly interested in  Guideline 2.1, Make all functionality operable 
via a keyboard or a keyboard interface. It
certainly seems like the lab scheduling web site is lacking in this 
respect.  She sees a link for Techniques and clicks on it. This takes her 
to a page that contains information about implementing this guideline in 
various technologies.  She copies this link and includes it in her email 
to the campus web master complaining about the lack of keyboard 
accessibility in the  lab scheduling page.  Her sister Jessica is a lawyer 
so Mary cc's her on the letter as well, maybe if the university doesn't 
respond, her sister can exert a little pressure.

Start at Guidelines 
From a specific Guideline select link to techniques specific to that 
guideline   (Techniques Repository)

-------------------------

Jessica is a lawyer at a large industrial company.  Her sister,  Mary,  is 
a freshman at the State University.  Mary recently sent an email  to the 
university complaining that she is unable to navigate the university web 
site using a keyboard and cc'ed Jessica.  This made Jessica start thinking 
about her own company's web site -  she wants to know if it  meets 
accessibility guidelines to avoid any possible lawsuits. Her sister's 
letter mentioned that the W3C has a set of accessibility guidelines.  She 
opens the W3C site in her browser and navigates to WAI and then finds the 
Web Content Accessibility Guidelines.  Jessica doesn't really care what 
the guidelines are, she just wants to know how to determine if the company 
web site complies.   She scans the Guidelines document contents and clicks 
on the link for "Compliance checklists".  This brings her to a new page 
that lists checklists for different technologies.  Jessica has no idea 
what technology the company website uses. She cuts and pastes the link 
into an email to the corporate web site owner with a note that says, 
"Please review and complete the appropriate checklists for our company web 
site and return to me". Jessica returns back to the WCAG Guidelines 
document and searches for information about marking her web site as 
conforming.  She follows a link on the contents page that brings her to a 
page explaining the "Conformance Requirements" and saves a  reference to 
this link for use when her web site owner returns the completed 
checklist(s) to her.

Start at WCAG Guidelines
Navigate to checklist
Navigate to conformance requirements

-------------------------

Andy is in charge of his company's web site.  He codes mostly in HTML and 
CSS.  He has been asked by one of the company lawyers to review the web 
site for accessibility compliance.  She sent him a URL to a checklist he 
is to complete for the site.  Andy isn't happy about taking time out from 
"real" work to review the website.  He thinks about assigning this  task 
to someone else but decides he should probably understand this 
"accessibility stuff".  He follows the link and is taken to a checklist 
page that list different technologies.  Since the company site is mostly 
HTML he follows that link to the WCAG HTML checklist.  He doesn't 
understand the checklist item, "there is no content that could cause 
photosensitive epileptic seizures."  So he clicks on a link on the page 
that takes him to Guideline 2.3 - Allow users to avoid content that could 
cause photosensitive epileptic seizures.  He reads the guideline to fully 
understand it, determines that this is not an issue for  his site and then 
returns to the checklist.  The checklist has an entry, "User errors are 
flagged and it is easy for the user to correct them".  His site does have 
a form with some required fields so he decides to investigate further. He 
clicks on the techniques link to find out how to implement this item and 
is taken to a Techniques "home" page for this  checklist item.  He selects 
the HTML techniques link for Guideline 2.5,  Help users avoid mistakes and 
make it easy to correct them. He wonders if he could implement this using 
CSS rather than pure HTML.  He returns back to the Techniques "home" page 
and selects CSS and reviews that techniques document.  Andy  returns to 
the Techniques for Guideline 2.3 home page, returns from there to the 
checklist, home page, selects the HTML specific checklist again, prints it 
out, manually marks  the appropriate answer for each checklist item and 
walks the form back to the lawyer. 


Start at Checklists
Select technology specific checklist
From technology specific checklist, link to Guideline for that checklist 
item
From Technology specific checklist item, link to techniques Repository
Select the appropriate technology. From technology specific technique, 
link back to Techniques repository for that specific guideline and select 
a different technology
From a technology specific technique, navigate back to the checklist or 
guidelines. 
(question:  If Andy is looking at the HTML specific checklist should he be 
immediately taken to to the HTML technique for that checklist item (rather 
than a page that has links for each technology)?  If so, how would he get 
to another Technology specifc technique for that checkist item? )
-------------------------

Marc has been charged with redesigning a large company's web site.  Marc 
is a graphics designer for a small web design company and this is his 
first "corporate" client. He looks forward to  using his graphic design 
skills to create an exciting web site for what he believes is a boring 
corporate customer.  The corporate customer insists that the web site be 
fully accessible  and meet WCAG 2.0.  Mark heads out to the W3C site to 
find out what that means.  Marc hopes to create a very flashy web site 
that he expects will include some SVG and possibly flash, He designs the 
"ideal" site but knows he will have to negotiate with the actual site 
implementers who have to use current technologies to make his ideas come 
to life. He isn't quite sure where to start - from the WCAG home page Marc 
notices a link to a WCAG Navigation (Traffic cop) document.  This document 
lists each guideline and has links to provide more detailed information 
and implementation techniques in different technologies. He begines 
reading through the table of guidelines.   He isn't quite sure he 
understands Guideline 1.4,  In visual presentations, make it easy to 
distinguish foreground words and images from the background. He clicks on 
the link to the HTML specific techniques for this guideline.  After 
returning, he also clicks on the link for SVG specific information.  He 
also  doesn't understand   Guideline 3.2, Organize content consistently 
from "page to page" and make interactive components behave in predictable 
ways.  Is this accessibility compliance going to ruin his cool new idea 
for page navigation?  How can he tell whether his  design meets this rule 
or not?  He clicks on the success criteria for this item.  That helps but 
he wants to know if there is a pass / fail for meeting this requirement? 
He returns to the Traffic cop page and sees a link to "Compliance 
Checklists" He clicks on that and is taken  to the "checklists" home page. 
 He can view the checklist by technology or by guideline, he selects "By 
Guideline" and than scrolls to Guideline 1.4.  Then he clicks on the link 
for specific technologies that might be used to implement his site, HTML, 
CSS, SVG, etc.   Marc feels that he has a reasonable idea about how to 
make his site accessible, he returns to the Guidelines home page, 
bookmarks it and gets started creating some story boards for the new site. 


Start at Traffic cop
From the Traffic cop Select link to techniques specific to  a particular 
guideline 
        select link to technology specific technique
From Traffic cop, link to success criteria for a specific guideline
From Traffic copy link to Checklists document
From Checklist document, Select a particular Guideline and review the 
checklist items for that guideline
        select a technology specific checklist item(s) for that guideline


---------------

Becky Gibson
Web Accessibility Architect
                                                       
IBM Emerging Internet Technologies
5 Technology Park Drive
Westford, MA 01886
Voice: 978 399-6101; t/l 333-6101
Email: gibsonb@us.ibm.com


Becky Gibson
Web Accessibility Architect
                                                       
IBM Emerging Internet Technologies
5 Technology Park Drive
Westford, MA 01886
Voice: 978 399-6101; t/l 333-6101
Email: gibsonb@us.ibm.com