Issues and proposals: conformance claims

At last week's telecon [1] there were several ideas that seemed to 
resonate with everyone.  Ben and I took them as "requirements" for our 
work on conformance claims. A summary:

   1. Conformance claims should be based on technology not user agent(s).
   2. Technology name and version is required; user agent information is
      optional.
   3. The claim should be simple to make. Providing a template or
      examples of common "profiles" would aid simplicity.  Common
      "profiles" or "baselines" could be documented and referenced in
      claims.
   4. Audience information could be included in a claim.
   5. Include enough information in the conformance claim such that a
      3rd party can verify the claim.  [We conclude this means that some
      technique-related information must be provided, although we didn't
      sketch out how this would work. We hope to discuss this on Thursday.]
   6. Conformance claims may include other optional assumptions.

[1] <http://www.w3.org/2005/03/31-wai-wcag-minutes.html#item06>

Here is a potential "template"  based on the "Conformance profiles" in 
UAAG 1.0 
<http://www.w3.org/TR/UAAG10/conformance.html#conformance-profiles>

A conformance claim includes the following assertions:

   1. Required: The date of the claim.
   2. Required: The guidelines title/version: "Web Content Accessibility
      Guidelines 2.0"
   3. Required: The URI of the guidelines:      
      http://www.w3.org/TR/2005/REC-WCAG20-YYYYMMDD/
   4. Required: The conformance level satisfied: "A", "AA", or "AAA" (or
      1, 2, or 3??)
   5. Required: A list of the specifications used to create the content
      for which the claim is being made.  This includes markup
      languages, style sheet languages, scripting/programming
      languages,  image formats, and multimedia formats.
   6. Required: For each specification, indication if the technology is
      "used" or "relied upon" (i.e., if used - the content is usable if
      that technology is turned off or not supported. if relied upon -
      the content is not usable if that technology is turned off or not
      supported)
   7. Required: Scope of the claim (a uri, list of uris or a regular
      expression)
   8. Optional: A list of user agents that the content has been tested
      on.  This should include assistive technologies.
   9. Optional: Information about audience assumptions or target
      audience.  This could include language, geographic information, 
      interests or ???

Examples of conformance claims

Example 1:  On 13 March 2005,  johnpointer.com  conforms to W3C's WCAG 
2.0. Conformance Level A. The specification that this content *relies 
upon* is: XHTML 1.0. The specifications that this content *uses *are: 
CSS2,  Real Video, Real Audio,  MP3, and gif.   This content was tested 
using the following user agents and assistive technologies: Firefox 1.01 
(windows, linux), IE 3.0 and 6.0 (windows, mac), Jaws 3.7 and Jaws 6.0 
(windows), Safari 1.2 (Mac), Opera 7.5 (OSX).

Example 2:  On 1 January 2005, "S5: An Introduction" 
<http://meyerweb.com/eric/tools/s5/s5-intro.html> conforms to W3C's WCAG 
2.0. Conformance Level A.  The specification that this content *relies 
upon* is: XHTML 1.0 (Strict). The specifications that this content *uses 
*are: JavaScript 1.2, CSS2, png, and jpg.

Example 3:  On 1 January 2005, "Photo gallery application" 
<http://foo.makeyourownslideshow.com> conforms to W3C's WCAG 2.0.  
Conformance Level A.  The specifications that this content *relies upon* 
are: XHTML 1.0 (Strict), CSS2, JavaScript 1.2, jpg.  The specification 
that this content *uses *is: gif.  The techniques profile that this site 
uses is, "HTML/ECMAScript for latest browsers."  [Note: This techniques 
profile is not defined, but it was something that we had talked about. 
See "Questions and issues" that follow.]

Questions and issues:
During last week's discussion and per proposals on the mailing list 
there is a potential requirement that  "technologies should meet minimum 
conditions" (ala Jason's proposal at [2]). However, as part of 
techniques we would need to clearly indicate "repair techniques" and 
perhaps build a mapping (or a list) of techniques that we recommend for 
a suggested baseline.  For example: for a baseline aimed at a wide 
audience we recommend avoiding accesskey since it is not widely 
supported by browsers and assistive technologies.
[2] <http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/w3c-wai-gl/2005JanMar/0679.html>

Thoughts? Questions? Issues?

Best,
--wendy

-- 
wendy a chisholm
world wide web consortium
web accessibility initiative
http://www.w3.org/WAI/
/--