RE: Extension conflict/compatibility requirement

I really can see where the lack of ‘testable’ items is an issue.   Oh to have weeks off work to try to go through all the proposed 11 items to provide water tight ‘success criteria’ and how they could be tightened up and made ‘testable’.

Thank you Gregg for being so clear with your thoughts and taking time out to share them, as many of those of us trying to help out on this task force are newbies in terms of WCAG work.    As you said it is not easy to take such as wide group of issues let alone disabilities and try to provide testable criteria to items that are often so ‘wishy washy’.  Clear structure – white space – how many millimetres /pixels/points  should be allowed between paragraphs/statements – where is the research to back 6pts or 12pts etc.

I voted for an ‘in-between’ result for our proposed 11 items, feeling guilty I had not had enough time to contribute sufficient work to make sure items were ‘success criteria’ and  testable,  but accepting that they were the important items that really have an impact on those with cognitive and learning difficulties when they are using web services.

For my part I wish we could get some funding to do surveys, find focus groups and interview users as well as really scour the academic papers linked to this sort of research, so that we could work on this properly.  I am not sure we would succeed but at least many of us could be able to give it a better shot than making it happen after working hours.

Best wishes
E.A.

Mrs E.A. Draffan
WAIS, ECS , University of Southampton
Mobile +44 (0)7976 289103
http://access.ecs.soton.ac.uk<http://access.ecs.soton.ac.uk/>
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From: Gregg Vanderheiden [mailto:gregg@raisingthefloor.org]
Sent: 25 October 2015 19:36
To: Laura Carlson <laura.lee.carlson@gmail.com>
Cc: Joshue O Connor <josh@interaccess.ie>; GLWAI Guidelines WG org <w3c-wai-gl@w3.org>; lisa.seeman <lisa.seeman@zoho.com>
Subject: Re: Extension conflict/compatibility requirement

Thanks Laura,

This is very helpful

Here it the problem/question I am having with the use of the word  Success Criteria
I looked over the document and I saw lots of techniques and general advice — but nothing that would qualify as a success criteria.

A success criteria would be a testable statement about the Web content - that can apply to all web content (as qualified in the SC).


For example

“Use a clear structure”

  *   is advice (or a command)  but not a success criteria.
  *   as a success criteria it might be worded  “Content uses a clear structure”

     *   except that isn’t testable.

        *   What does clear structure mean exactly for all types of content?
        *   Would most everyone agree for each page whether the structure was clear or not?

     *   If not it can’t be a criterion for success.

I love the document — it is full of great techniques and can provide a lot of valuable guidance in how to make things more accessible to not only people with cognitive disabilities but everyone.
But I think you are running into the same problem that the WCAG WG ran into with WCAG 2.0

There are lots of things to talk about or provide advice on.    But there is little that
a) applies always on all web pages   (including the National Science foundation,  medical websites,  an online physics course,  the online repair manual for a nuclear resonant imager, etc. ) or else have clear unambiguous criteria for what is excluded from the requirement)
b) is objective enough to be testable  (most people rating something independently would come up with the same answer)

This is what drove us crazy in trying to define SC in this area and find thing that there was consensus on as being  testable, and applicable across we pages.   (These arent the only criteria for SC but they are the ones that stopped us the most.


Maybe I missed one or two in the document — that would qualify (if I did let me know) .     But most (or all?)  of the things listed as SC  - can’t qualify.

They are all good advice.  But not


I think it is important to not label things as SC that don’t qualify.   It really confuses the discussion - and will only create stuff that needs to be reworked later.


PS - I also saw that some provisions were recommended to be moved from level AAA to higher levels.   The one exception we did make (in order to include more cognitive SC) was to put some things into Level AAA that did not apply to all web content.  We clearly mentioned that in the WCAG (that some things in level AAA could not be applied to all websites) and recommended that level AAA never be universally required for that reason.    For that reason - those items also could not be moved to higher levels because they do not meet the full SC criteria.


Good luck on this.   This is a critical area — but it is very hard to find things that qualify as SC.    I think a better route is to focus on creating a “Design Guidelines for making web content more accessible to people with cognitive, language, and learning disabilities”     and make it a ‘how to’ rather than a standard - which will just tie you up in knots like it did the WCAG WG working on WCAG 2.0 — because a standard can only have objective testable criteria  for conformance — and ones that always apply (or always apply as qualified) —  and we  don’t know how to do that for most all of the good advice that we have for making things accessible to this important group of groups of users.


gregg

----------------------------------
Gregg Vanderheiden
gregg@raisingthefloor.org<mailto:gregg@raisingthefloor.org>



On Oct 25, 2015, at 11:37 AM, Laura Carlson <laura.lee.carlson@gmail.com<mailto:laura.lee.carlson@gmail.com>> wrote:

Hi Gregg,

On 10/21/15, Gregg Vanderheiden <gregg@raisingthefloor.org<mailto:gregg@raisingthefloor.org>> wrote:


Where is there  a list of the actual SC we have so far for
any extensions? I  went though the docs and there were
lots of places where there was a title that said Success
criteria X  but then there was no SC below it. Just general
advice or techniques.

How many do we have?

The COGA TF has a first draft of an extension proposal [1] for the
full WCAG working group to review via survey [2]. The draft currently
has 11 proposed Success Criterion.

1. Enable adaptability
2. Timed event should be avoided
3. Use a clear structure
4. Use clear visual affordances
5. Use a clear writing style
6. Minimize the cognitive skills required to use the content when
there is an alternative that achieves the same ends
7. Be predictable
8. Provide rapid and direct feedback
9. Help the user understand the content
10. Help users complete and check their work
11. Help the user maintain attention

Kindest Regards,
Laura

[1] https://www.w3.org/WAI/PF/cognitive-a11y-tf/wiki/Proposal_for_WCAG

[2] https://www.w3.org/2002/09/wbs/35422/cogaextreview/


--
Laura L. Carlson