Re: Task testing structure

Shawn writes:

Potential adapting to:

Conformance Claims (Optional)
Conformance is defined only for tasks. However, a conformance claim may be
made to cover one task, a series of tasks, or multiple related tasks.


I think (if I better understand your concern, John) this should address the
case of someone having their conformance claim imply that it covers all of
example.com or MyAwesomeApp, while only defining and testing a subset of
tasks wiithin that conformance claim?

Thoughts?

Well, putting aside the fact that I understand you aren't 'happy' with the
term Task here either... (perhaps "interaction"?) my thoughts are still:

   - Not every site is 'task' or 'interaction' driven - they may also be
   100% 'push' content (Joe's Blog, with commenting turned off)

   - The language still feels kind of slippery - it still lets the owner
   decide what is more critical or important for all end users, but also
   empowers them to exclude some content from some users without even making
   an effort. It's akin to me establishing my own speed limit on the highway
   (which I understand is actually a thing on the Autobans of Germany
   <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autobahn>). This will benefit site-owners
   at the cost to site users I fear.

   - If we really are moving away from page-level conformance to
   'site-level' conformance "score" (no longer just pass/fail), then I assert
   our spec needs to be very clear with any exclusion criteria, as well as how
   the conformance is scoped - in the conformance statement itself.

   - Any "exemption rules" need a real grounding in logic and feasibility -
   it cannot just be because the site owner doesn't think it's in scope. (I
   mean, they can think anything they want, but then there is the law...) As I
   noted on today's call, we're going to need regulators to pick up our
   specification if we *really* want it to be effective (beyond a collection
   of Best Practices), and so we need to ensure we are as unambiguous as
   possible in this regard.

However Shawn, yes, this is my concern: "*...having their conformance claim
imply that it covers all of example.com <http://example.com/> or
MyAwesomeApp, while only defining and testing a subset of tasks within that
conformance claim?*"

Part of the problem is that 'conformance statements' are about as dry to
read as click-through EULA's, and most site visitors won't know what is or
isn't in or out of scope. And I cannot think of a more frustrating scenario
for a PwD than to be told that the section of the site *they* want to
access - Chuck's Pizza Game(TM) - is out of scope for the accessibility
conformance thing, so "too bad".

Additionally, as we transition away from black or white (aka Pass/Fail) to
a more realistic long-tail score (the million shades of gray between black
and white), the scoring *should* allow for partially but not fully
conformant content to exist on the site - but at a cost to the overall
score (i.e. "you're losing points there bud..."). Allowing site owners to
self-exempt will drive up scores, but do little for end users.

JF

On Tue, Apr 28, 2020 at 4:32 PM Shawn Lauriat <lauriat@google.com> wrote:

> Should the standard be defining coverage? Or would it be better to make
>> the same sort of assumptions as 2.x and leave it to regulators to say
>> whether a site should cover all tasks, or what the sampling is?
>
>
> Exactly, we could instead define conformance scope as purely per-task and
> discard the notion of a collection of tasks as a definition of a complete
> thing. That'd follow the WCAG 2.x per-page model, while allowing people to
> optionally put several together to declare a larger scope, just like WCAG
> 2.x does today. It wouldn't have any aspect of conformance itself implying
> declaration of a full scope of an "entire" thing, but merely a collection
> of small things. To write it out for comparison:
>
> WCAG: 5.3 Conformance Claims (Optional)
> <https://www.w3.org/TR/WCAG21/#conformance-claims>
> Conformance is defined only for Web pages. However, a conformance claim
> may be made to cover one page, a series of pages, or multiple related Web
> pages.
>
>
> Potential adapting to:
>
> Conformance Claims (Optional)
> Conformance is defined only for tasks. However, a conformance claim may be
> made to cover one task, a series of tasks, or multiple related tasks.
>
>
> I think (if I better understand your concern, John) this should address
> the case of someone having their conformance claim imply that it covers all
> of example.com or MyAwesomeApp, while only defining and testing a subset
> of tasks wiithin that conformance claim?
>
> Thoughts?
>
> (Chuck wrote, as I had this drafted:)
>
> Shawn mentioned something in the W3C call that didn't get a lot of
>> attention in call, was some system whereby the author defines the scope,
>> and that scoping exercise (or process or determination) is open to the
>> public (or I forget the words...) fully disclosable?  Discoverable?  He
>> used a word or phrase...
>
>
> "Transparent", which came to mind from the Silver requirement for
> providing broad support to the regulatory environment
> <https://w3c.github.io/silver/requirements/index.html#regulatory-environment>.
> Not necessarily public, but if someone says their thing conforms and then
> needs to show their conformance claim,
>
> -Shawn
>
> P.S. Separately from scope itself, we'll definitely need to work out
> non-interference, what does "task" mean and can we have a better word, etc.
> The agenda item we didn't get to in today's call.
>
> On Tue, Apr 28, 2020 at 4:11 PM Charles Adams <charles.adams@oracle.com>
> wrote:
>
>> Shawn mentioned something in the W3C call that didn't get a lot of
>> attention in call, was some system whereby the author defines the scope,
>> and that scoping exercise (or process or determination) is open to the
>> public (or I forget the words...) fully disclosable?  Discoverable?  He
>> used a word or phrase...
>>
>> I'm going to extend the use case of "Corner Pizza", and the game that's
>> been mentioned.  I'm going to extend it to two games.
>>
>> Game One:  Guess which celebrity most recently visited our shop and get
>> $1 off your pizza order.
>>
>> Game Two:  Web based Pizza Party!  Cook needs to create a series of
>> pizzas correctly as orders speed up.  This web based game exists only to
>> generate traffic, and is not necessary to order a pizza or to utilize any
>> other "Corner Pizza" service.
>>
>> In the case of Game One I think it should be scoped in, as there's a
>> purpose with consumer impact for playing and "winning" the game.
>>
>> If the business case for Game Two was just to attract web traffic to the
>> site, I could see a case for the author wanting to scope that out.  The
>> second game isn't a required step for ordering a pizza or any other
>> service.  The author just wants to attract traffic in the hopes that the
>> players decide to use the accessible ordering app to order something.
>>
>> In the extended use case of "Corner Pizza", I would think that Game One's
>> accessibility SHOULD impact the final score, and I would think that Game
>> Two's accessibility could be argued to be irrelevant to the final score.  I
>> also think that if there was some public facing information which
>> documented that Game Two was scoped out of the score, reviewers would be
>> able to determine that this "scope exclusion" was not intended to abuse any
>> conformance model.  IF the content author also tried to scope out Game One,
>> that could be perceived as an attempt to abuse the conformance model.
>>
>> Regards,
>>
>> Chuck
>>
>>
>> On 4/28/2020 7:42 AM, Alastair Campbell wrote:
>>
>> > I also was under the presumption that we were moving from a "per-page"
>> conformance model to a "site-wide" conformance "score".
>>
>>
>>
>> I’m not sure about that, but I thought there was a move from page to task.
>>
>>
>>
>> Given a move from page to task:
>>
>> Should the standard be defining coverage? Or would it be better to make
>> the same sort of assumptions as 2.x and leave it to regulators to say
>> whether a site should cover all tasks, or what the sampling is?
>>
>> -Alastair
>>
>>
>>
>>

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