Re: 1.3.1 question

Hi all,

I'd like to share with you how we addressed this kind of issue in
Japan. We took the "snapshot" approach you might be interested in.

Japan has a national standard which is called "JIS X 8341-3". JIS
stands for "Japanese Industrial Standard". JIS X 8341-3 is the
national standard on how to make web content accessible. It was
published in 2004 for the first time.

In 2010, JIS X 8341-3 was updated. We adopted the same SC of WCAG 2.0
as the requirements for web content. At the same time, we developed
the JIS-specific requirements for the evaluation methods and
conformance claim. The requirements were based on the "Conformance
Claims (Optional)" section of WCAG 2.0.

John took an example of an automobile. And John wrote "if it conformed
to WCAG 2.0 in 2009, it should remain conformant in 2016". That was
the point we tackled when we developed the 2010 version of JIS X
8341-3. Web content is different from automobiles in its nature.

In general, web contents/websites/web pages are changing day by day.
Even if a website made a conformance claim on the specific date, it
can't be conformant any more on the next day if a new web page which
has a failure is added to the website.

So we took the snapshot approach to solve this situation. We required
to specify the period of the evaluation/testing in the conformance
claim. For example, if a website made a conformance claim on April 5th
2009, it means that the website was conformant on that date and it
doesn't guarantee that the website is still conformant in 2016. If the
website want to say that it is still conformant today, they need to
evaluate the website again and make the new conformance claim on April
5th 2016.

Maybe it was possible for us to do this because we didn't have any
legal obligation for web accessibility in Japan. But this approach
allows us to document new techniques/failures anytime we want. We can
refer to the latest techniques/failures whenever we evaluate a website
and make a conformance claim.

And we don't think that this is a perfect solution. There are both
pros and cons. For example,
- It can be fairly costly for organizations to keep their conformance
claim as "fresh" as possible. How often should we update the
conformance claim?
- There is a bunch of web pages within the website which were created
long time ago and still exist without any changes. Do we have to
modify those pages if new techniques/failures are applicable?

JIS X 8341-3 was updated last month. JIS X 8341-3:2016 is available.
It became the Japanese translation of WCAG 2.0. We don't have any
JIS-specific requirements any more. ISO/IEC 40500:2012(=WCAG 2.0) is
the Japanese national standard now. So I'm very interested in this
discussion.


--
Makoto Ueki
Infoaxia, Inc.

Chairman of WAIC(Web Accessibility Infrastructure Committe in Japan)
Chair of JIS X 8341-3:2016 working group

Received on Tuesday, 5 April 2016 14:03:19 UTC