scenarios for WCAG 2 design

While on the Techniques call last week, I wrote up the folllowing start
on scenarios to help think about the range of people, motivations,
circumstances, and tasks coming to WCAG. Searching through the list
archives, I see there has already been some work in this area [1]

As it is human nature to design for oneself, and most of WCAG WG
represents a small part of Wag's intended audience, I would encourage
the group to spend a little more effort to further understand the
different situations of WCAG users and keep that in the forefront
especially when designing interaction between the different WCAG
documents (e.g., David's traffic cop idea).
(That is, these below are just a start - they definitely need more work
and attention.)

Hope this helps!

Best,

~ Shawn


Policy Research Group Member: I am Director of the XYZ Disability
organization. I was appointed to a Policy Research Group to determine
Web accessibility guidelines for our country to adopt. We are going
through WCAG 2.0 in detail to determine if we want to recommend it as
is, or use it as a basis to create our own.

High-Level Policy Maker: I am a high-level policy maker. Under my
Ministry we convened a group to consider a Web accessibility policy.
That group recommended that we adopt WCAG 2.0. We are about to announce
this and I want to have a general idea of what is in there. I want to
print out something and review it on the train ride home - which is 35
minutes.

Accessibility specialist: My general approach is to know the basics
really well, and know how to get the specifics when needed. So, first I
need to get a general overview of what is in WCAG 2.0, specifically I
need to see what is different from WCAG 1.0. I don't mean just
checkpoint mapping, I mean like real content differences. Those I want
to study now - so I'll print those out. Then for later, I want to
understand really well how all the information (guidelines, different
techniques documents, etc.) is related and linked so when a specific
issue comes up, I can get to the answer easily  (especially in front of
others). Usually I end up printing out info to give to the developer who
is working on that issue.

Web project manager: I've just been told that our Web site has to meet
WCAG 2.0. I want to review the high level issues and determine what we
don't have to worry about (e.g., we don't use frames and don't have
multimedia) and what I need to assign to whom. That is, I have different
people working on different things. I'm going to tell them which areas
they are responsible for - and assign them to learn about that area
fully, and then come back to me with recommendations for implementation
effort and such. 

CSS guru: I'm the CSS specialist for a large Web shop. Basically, we
have pretty defined areas: IA, content, HTML, visual design, etc. I
really don't have time or inclination to care about the who, what, why
about accessibility. I just want to know what I need to do in my CSS for
accessibility (which is a requirement).

Low-tech wanting specific issue only: I'm a Web content provider - that
is, someone else did all the design and stuff, I mostly just update the
Announcements section of our HR (human resources) intranet site. I
usually only use a content management system to put in basic text, so I
don't have to worry about markup or accessibility. Now I want to do a
simple form [or table or such]. I already know how to do that from a
[XYZ authoring tool] class I took (because I'm a bit of a
Web-developer-wannabe). Our organization has a strong accessibility
policy. I would like to be able to figure out how to make it accessible
on my own, without having to ask someone for help.

Authoring or evaluation tool developer: We are incorporating support for
WCAG 2.0 in the next version of our tool. I have been assigned [one
chunk] to study in-depth and determine how to implement support for it
in our tool.

User with a disability, low-tech: My favorite local cinema just
redesigned their Web site. Before I could use it, but now it's awful. I
know it has something to do with the way they have the table that lists
the movies. I emailed them and they said they'd be happy to try to fix
it and asked me what they should do. I don't know - I'm not a Web
developer! Anyway, I know about WAI guidelines and so I'd like to find
information about how to make tables accessible and email a link to
them.


[1] Related info:
- personas from Tom:
http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/w3c-wai-gl/2003JulSep/0497.html
- use cases from David: http://www.eramp.com/david/
- detailed use cases from Becky:
http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/w3c-wai-gl/2004AprJun/0457.html

- personas (in process) from WAI Site Redesign Task Force (WSTF):
	http://www.w3.org/WAI/EO/2003/personas
- task list from WSTF: http://www.w3.org/WAI/EO/2003/tasks, particularly
# 6, 10, 14, 20, 21


--------------------------------------
Shawn Lawton Henry
W3C Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI)
e-mail: shawn@w3.org
phone: +1.617.253.8788
about: http://www.w3.org/People/Shawn/

Received on Tuesday, 29 June 2004 17:59:58 UTC