Re: consideration for wcag.next and cognitive

Hi Lisa,

I understand your worry in terms of the difficulties of integrating the requirements into a combined WCAG, there is a lot of overlap with usability, difficulty in testability, and potential conflict with requirements from other sources.

However, I suspect the priority given to a separate extension with conflicting requirements would probably equate to level AAAA (4 As). I would hope there is a way of improving things more quickly.

If it is a case that we intend to integrate the conflicting SCs from the extension in future, but recognise some difficulties and are allowing extra time, that is perfectly reasonable.

If the chosen model is a unified one (option 2 from the list) like WCAG 2.x, would COG-TF requirements/SCs need a different process?

My understanding is that the levels in WCAG2 were set by how important the requirement is, how difficult it is to implement, how well it could be objectively tested, and whether it clashed with other SCs.

We could incorporate any COG-TF SCs that are important,  easy to implement, testable, and non-clashing into WCAG 2.1.
We could keep in the extension the more difficult ones until some agreement is reached about how they can be incorporated.

I think the result would be the same as option 1 (keeping separate extensions), except that the SCs that can be incorporated would be part of the main WCAG 2.1 document, therefore some progress is made sooner?

Cheers,

-Alastair


From: "lisa.seeman"
Date: Thursday, 14 April 2016 at 11:00
To: W3c-Wai-Gl


Hi Folks
This might be a consideration for wcag.next extension model

People with cognitive disabilities face a lot of discrimination. When people discriminate against COGA people I don't think they realize they are being discriminatory or unfair. I can give horror stories, but I am sure if you think about it most of us can think of normal practices that would raise an outcry if they were targeting any other group. It is an entrenched attitude.

When our work is published some peoples first reaction might be that it is ridicules or even unfair that they should be expected to accommodate our user groups.

If it is an extension we can argue that this extension is for people and groups who have decided to accommodate as many people as they can.  And then people and policy makers will need to go away and think where do they stand. They will have to have a conversation. There might be a law case or two (once there is clear guidance on what you could have done and did not do, then there is a legal case to be made for inclusion) . The business case will be considered, and the real numbers and loss of business and distributed cost to the economy will come to light and that the only way forward,  from a moral or from an economic point of view, will be to include coga. I believe policy makers will get there. But I do not think it will be on day one.

The extension model  enables society and policy makers to think it though and have the conversation, and adopt it when they are ready. It means the extension can be about how to make content accessible for people with cognitive disabilities, and not what will content creators be prepared to put up with today. In the medium term I think that will make for better accessibility.


All the best

Lisa Seeman

LinkedIn<http://il.linkedin.com/in/lisaseeman/>, Twitter<https://twitter.com/SeemanLisa>