WCAG 2.0 failures and evaluation methodologies

Hi,

In Europe, organizations in several countries developed evaluation 
methodologies for checking conformance to WCAG 1.0. Examples include 
BrailleNet's AccessiWeb [1] in France, Technosite's evaluation 
methodology [2] in Spain, the methodology for "Waarmerk 
drempelvrij.nl" by Bartimeus Accessibility in the Netherlands [3] and 
the AnySurfer guidelines by AnySurfer (formerly BlindSurfer) in 
Belgium [4]. Each has or had their own set of tests, but there has 
been an effort to unify these methodologies in a "Unified Web 
Evaluation Methodology" (UWEM) [5]. The biggest section in this 
methodology is the section with tests [6], which took a long time to develop.
With WCAG 2.0, the fragmentation described above can hopefully be 
avoided. The inclusion of tests, especially for failures, is very 
helpful in this respect. A Unified Web Evaluation Methodology for 
WCAG 2.0 could refer to the tests in "Techniques and Failures for 
WCAG 2.0" instead of developing yet another set of tests for 
conformance evaluation. However, "Techniques and Failures for WCAG 
2.0" does not contain failures for every success criterion. The 
addition of failures for success criteria that currently only have 
techniques would be useful, because then the set of failures in 
"Techniques and Failures for WCAG 2.0" could serve as the basis of an 
evaluation methodology (provided that the methodology also addresses 
less common failures), and thus help the accessibility community in 
avoiding fragmentation in evaluation methodologies. I hope these 
failures will be added in one of the next version of the techniques document.

P.S. The current editor's draft has common failures for SC 1.1.1, 
1.2.1, 1.3.1, 1.3.2, 1.3.3, 1.3.4, 1.4.1, 1.4.2, 1.4.3 (in the Wiki), 
1.4.6 (in the Wiki), 2.1.1, 2.2.1, 2.2.2, 2.2.3, 2.2.5, 2.2.6, 2.4.2, 
2.4.3, 2.4.4, 2.4.6, 3.2.1, 3.2.2, 3.2.3, 3.2.4, 3.2.5, 4.1.2 (i.e. 
26 success criteria).
The following SC have no common failures: 1.2.2, 1.2.3, 1.2.4, 1.2.5, 
1.2.6, 1.2.7, 1.4.4, 1.4.5, 2.1.2 (the sufficient techniques are the 
same as for 2.1.1, but nothing is said about failures), 2.2.4, 2.3.1, 
2.3.2, 2.4.1, 2.4.5, 2.4.7, 2.4.8, 3.1.1, 3.1.2, 3.1.3, 3.1.4, 3.1.5, 
3.1.6, 3.3.1, 3.3.2, 3.3.3, 3.3.4, 3.3.5, 3.3.6 (the sufficient 
techniques are the same as for 3.3.3, but nothing is said about 
failures), 4.1.1 (i.e. 29 success criteria).


[1] 
http://www.accessiweb.org/fr/Label_Accessibilite/criteres_accessiweb/ 
(in French)
[2] http://www.technosite.es/auditoria.asp (in Spanish)
[3] http://www.accessibility.nl/toetsing (in Dutch)
[4] http://www.anysurfer.be/nl/richtlijnen/richtlijnen (in Dutch), or 
http://www.anysurfer.be/fr/directives/ce-que-vous-devez-savoir (in French)
[5] http://www.wabcluster.org/uwem/ (in English), 
http://www.accessiweb.org/fr/uwem/index.html (French translation), 
http://www.technosite.es/SRV/metodologia/index.html (Spanish translation).
[6] http://www.wabcluster.org/uwem/tests/

Best regards,

Christophe


-- 
Christophe Strobbe
K.U.Leuven - Departement of Electrical Engineering - Research Group 
on Document Architectures
Kasteelpark Arenberg 10 - 3001 Leuven-Heverlee - BELGIUM
tel: +32 16 32 85 51
http://www.docarch.be/ 


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Received on Wednesday, 18 April 2007 13:59:05 UTC