Re: Finding HHello jennie,elp

Alastair writes:

"...If it met ‘set of web pages’ (I assume yes)," [JF: yes] "... then it
would be required to have one of the 4 things. In that scenario, I’d
suggest a link or email address for tech-support!"

So while I agree with the "*Suggestion*", I bristle at "the *REQUIREMENT*",
because in some contexts it is likely (or at least
possibly/probably) inappropriate.

In my hypothetical (but realistic) use case, it is a multi-screen form that
writes to a data-base, and it uses basic HTML form inputs to grab the data
- pretty straight forward and requiring very little further help or
explanation. The *specialized user* (employee / data-clerk) who is using
that collection of intranet pages (the multi-screen form) has already been
trained on how to solicit and format the data to be inputted, (and
potentially the team that created and use that form are all together in the
same office - "Hey Bob, how did you format box #17?"...) In that instance,
I cannot justify forcing a link on each screen to an email contact to get
in touch with Bob, who is possibly sitting right beside me.

I can too easily and too quickly come up with use-cases where "human help"
in the context of the screen flow simply doesn't make sense - yet to be
WCAG 2.2 compliant we'll need to add that link AND support that "human
help"? Sorry, to my mind that is over-reach, and the type of broad, blanket
demand we need to be avoiding (at least IMHO).

Reviewing the Intent section
<https://docs.google.com/document/d/1fX4Iw169OGUny5RTd70S8qAneYy5e0hr7zupE21gPBM/edit?pli=1#>,
it clearly states:

"*The intent of this proposed Success Criteria is to ensure users can find
help for completing tasks on a website.*"


...and NOT

"*The intent of this proposed Success Criteria is to ensure a form of Human
Help is always provided and is easy to locate*".


If this SC was hewing closer to how Chuck and I first read the SC (IF/ WHEN
those types of help are present, THEN...), then I think we'll be fine - but
*demanding* one of those 4 types of help, and a persistent easy-to-locate
link to that help *on every (collection of) web page(s) on the internet /
intranet / extranet* simply will not scale, and I will oppose that SC
language strongly.

JF

On Fri, Apr 17, 2020 at 11:30 AM Alastair Campbell <acampbell@nomensa.com>
wrote:

> Hi John,
>
> > Are we saying now that *EVERY* web page will need to have a link to one
> of these types of Help?
>
> Not all, a lot of the conversation was around that scoping, the SC starts
> <https://docs.google.com/document/d/1fX4Iw169OGUny5RTd70S8qAneYy5e0hr7zupE21gPBM/edit>
> :
>
> “For *single page apps* or any set of web pages
> <https://www.w3.org/TR/WCAG21/#dfn-set-of-web-pages> with blocks of
> content that are repeated on multiple web pages
> <https://www.w3.org/TR/WCAG21/#dfn-web-page-s>,"
>
> So for:
>
> USE-CASE:
>
> A data-entry clerk in a large organization spends their day answering
> phone calls, capturing information from clients into a 5-screen web-form.
> The clerk (a user) deals with these same five screens multiple times a day.
> Currently the form's inputs are all properly labeled, and the five screens
> today are all WCAG 2.0 compliant (complete with header and footer content
> that repeats on each screen).
>
>
> If it met ‘set of web pages’ (I assume yes), and the same criteria as
> bypass-blocks (I assume no?), then it would be required to have one of the
> 4 things. In that scenario, I’d suggest a link or email address for
> tech-support!
>
>
>
>
>
> > demanding every instance of a web "page" links to one of *a specific
> type of help* flies in the face of reality on the web, and will not scale
> to all of the types of web content on the web today.
>
>
>
> We spent some time finding examples, and I was mostly worried about the
> lower end (e.g. personal blogs), but given that most already have an email
> address or contact form, it didn’t seem difficult.
>
>
>
> I do wonder about the higher end, where you might have a consistent link
> to ‘help’ or ‘support’, but that page doesn’t necessarily have a phone
> number or direct contact because there are so many areas that people can go
> into (e.g. Apple <https://support.apple.com/en-gb>, or a large ecommerce
> site <https://www.argos.co.uk/help/>). We need to make sure that’s
> acceptable, as there is no feasible way a company that size could just
> provide a contact method.
>
>
>
> Overall, the addition of chatbots & self-help came from the difficulty of
> different sites being able to provide human details.
>
>
>
> The understanding document goes into that reasoning, which is around the
> need for some sort of human help (where possible).
>
>
>
> Anyway, it is on the agenda for Tuesday, the survey is open…
>
>
>
> -Alastair
>


-- 
*​John Foliot* | Principal Accessibility Strategist | W3C AC Representative
Deque Systems - Accessibility for Good
deque.com