Musings on Functional Outcomes, granularity

If I take Jakes examples for 'Semantic Structure', I guess the 
associated Functional Outcomes (which ones do we need?) should be 
informed by looking whether different tests are needed to verify whether 
the FO is achieved. Let's try it for the three FOs listed by Jake:

Am 07.09.2020 um 09:46 schrieb jake abma:
>
> "Provides semantic structure so can convey a sense of hierarchy"
Would check whether visual headings are marked up by h1-h6 or ARIA equiv.
Would check whether the  mark-up levels convey the hierarchy (this may 
be the place to tolerate skipped levels if the overall hierarchy is correct)
> "Provides semantic structure so users can navigate"
Seems partly covered in "sense of hierarchy", e.g. in the case of 
invisible headings to bypass blocks, or in fact for content navigation 
of documents (say, Screenreader command "2" will go to next section when 
all correctly marked up with h2)
Would check whether structural parts like header, nav, main, footer are 
marked up so they can be reached via landmark navigation
> "Provides semantic structure so users can locate"
Same as above? Or it might add checking whether stuctural elements are 
not only marked up also meaningfully named for differentiation
Might also check whether particular types of content can be located, 
say, if search is defined as role (but may still pass content where it 
is not marked up thus, so graded rating will be beneficial here)

So we see that the same tests contribute to different FOs, which may not 
be not a bad thing.

The question that arises is whether 'semantic structure' should also 
encompass things other than headings and structural page sections:
- tables have a simple hioerarchy of th / td (or even leves of th)
- fieldset/legend -> label may be conisdered a hierarchy
- think tapanels, menus, trees, etc...

Are we going to create other FOs for different semantic structures so we 
can pin more specific methods to these and avoid the kitchen-sink 
problem of SC 1.3.1?

So I am really uncertain how the order of things (with its differences 
across technologies) will be best reflected in the order of FO, how 
fine-grained FO should be to be most useful, and if and how FOs can be 
kept technology-independent in the way current SCs strive to be (some of 
them not so successfully).

Detlev

-- 
Detlev Fischer
DIAS GmbH
(Testkreis is now part of DIAS GmbH)

Mobil +49 (0)157 57 57 57 45

http://www.dias.de
Beratung, Tests und Schulungen für barrierefreie Websites

Received on Wednesday, 9 September 2020 14:25:36 UTC