Re: Success criteria not applicable

Dear William Loughborough,

I was involved in the development of UWEM, so I will try to answer 
some of your questions below.


At 13:00 5/10/2009, William Loughborough wrote:
>The "WAB Cluster" at <http://www.wabcluster.org/index.html> describes
>itself as "A cluster of European projects to develop a harmonized
>European methodology for evaluation and benchmarking of websites"

The development of the UWEM methodology sprang from the observation 
that there are many accessibility evaluation methodologies and 
accessibility labels in the European Union, for example AccessiWeb in 
France, Technosite's methodology in Spain, AnySurfer in Belgium, and 
other methodologies in Germany, the UK and elsewhere. Several 
participants of the three projects that constituted the WAB Cluster 
award accessibility labels or are/were involved in the development of 
evaluation software. The WAB Cluster also wanted a methodology that 
would be suitable for automated monitoring of (large numbers of) big websites.


>and
>"...quality of the methodology, including its validation,
>participation of relevant stakeholders, support from and possible
>endorsement by or inclusion of comments from W3C/WAI, will be
>essential for a subsequent European-wide acceptation. When possible
>work for the cluster will be closely coordinated or take place inside
>WAI Working Groups (e.g. WCAG WG, ERT and EOWG)."

The UWEM methodology went through several versions and each version 
underwent one or more reviews (by experts chosen by the European 
Commission, by WAI staff members, by reviewers invited by the WAB Cluster).


>I believe this is the first time I've noticed any inclusion of their
>efforts/concerns in EOWG and wonder how this relates to the overall
>goal of "harmonis(z)ation"? Are we going to need a pair (at least) of
>evaluation criteria? In other words is there some separate "European
>methodology" that is distinct from that used by Shadi and other BAD
>editors? Is there any way to "harmonis(z)e various harmoniz(s)ations"
>or are we going to have arrays of rules made distinct, sort of i18n's
>own Tower of Babel?

The criteria in UWEM are not provided by UWEM itself but by WCAG. 
When the WAB Cluster ended, WCAG 2,0 had not yet been finalised, so 
the current version of UWEM is still based on WCAG 1.0.
The Before and After Demo is being/has been updated to meet WCAG 2.0 
(see the requirements at 
<http://www.w3.org/WAI/EO/2005/Demo/changelog.html#waiage>).
So the harmonisation is in the direction of WCAG.
I don't know when UWEM will be updated to WCAG 2.0. The WAB Cluster 
wanted a methodology based on WCAG 2.0 but the timing was against us.


>Perhaps I'm suffering a years-long "senior moment" but I don't recall
>being asked to provide "inclusion of comments...for a subsequent
>European-wide acceptation" or had any work for the cluster show up on
>our agendas.

UWEM wasn't mentioned a lot on WAI mailing lists, especially the 
later versions (see for example 
<http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/w3c-wai-ig/2005OctDec/0237.html>, 
<http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/w3c-wai-ig/2006JanMar/0165.html>, 
<http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/w3c-wai-gl/2007AprJun/0043.html>).

However, I still collect comments from anyone who wants to send them.


Best regards,

Christophe Strobbe


>Love.
>
>On Mon, Oct 5, 2009 at 12:21 AM, Alan Chuter <achuter@technosite.es> wrote:
>< Accessibility evaluation reports may flag a success
>< criterion or checkpoint as not applicable when...
><
>< It might be useful guidance to make this explicit in the BAD reports, but
>< even more, the WCAG WG could give its opinion to make clear when a success
>< criterion can be flagged as "not applicable" in a conformance report.

-- 
Christophe Strobbe
K.U.Leuven - Dept. of Electrical Engineering - SCD
Research Group on Document Architectures
Kasteelpark Arenberg 10 bus 2442
B-3001 Leuven-Heverlee
BELGIUM
tel: +32 16 32 85 51
http://www.docarch.be/
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Received on Monday, 5 October 2009 12:56:48 UTC