+1 to both Wilco and John's comments

Jaunita George, JD, PMP (she/her)
QA-ADA Analyst III. Marketing
DHS Certified Trusted Tester
Navy Federal Credit Union, 820 Follin Lane, Vienna VA 22180
W: 571-391-0356 | C: 206-778-1882

 




From:        John Foliot <john@foliot.ca>
To:        Wilco Fiers <wilco.fiers@deque.com>
Cc:        Katie Haritos-Shea <ryladog@gmail.com>, John Foliot <john@foliot.ca>, Jonathan Avila <jon.avila@levelaccess.com>, WCAG <w3c-wai-gl@w3.org>
Date:        04/28/2021 08:05 AM
Subject:        [External] Re: WCAG 2.3 v 3.0 - was RE: XR Subgroup Update [April 27th 2021]



Wilco writes:

> I don't much like the option of another WCAG 2.3, but I much prefer it over not seeing any updated recommendations for the next decade.

Exactly my point Wilco. 

> The better option in my opinion is to break WCAG 3 up into multiple recommendations that can be prioritized and published independently.

Indeed, and FWIW, that is exactly how the CSS WG handles their specifications. (see: https://github.com/w3c/csswg-drafts)

JF

On Wed, Apr 28, 2021 at 7:13 AM Wilco Fiers <wilco.fiers@deque.com> wrote:
My 2 cents,

WCAG 3 is currently unbound. We haven't settled on if it is going to include usability testing, AT testing, a maturity model, reporting, sampling, metrics, user agent guidelines, authoring tool guidelines, etc. If we try to do all of that, on top of rewriting every single WCAG success criterion, and adding in new ones, I would be surprised if WCAG 3 could make it to recommendation before the end of the decade.

I don't much like the option of another WCAG 2.3, but I much prefer it over not seeing any updated recommendations for the next decade. The better option in my opinion is to break WCAG 3 up into multiple recommendations that can be prioritized and published independently. I've pitched this to Silver multiple times, and I hope we get to discuss this in tomorrow's workshop.

Just rewriting and modernizing all WCAG 2 success criteria is a daunting task. I agree with Katie that we should focus our efforts, but that goes for WCAG 3 efforts too. We can't build a good maturity model, while better addressing the COGA requirements, while solving the all-or-nothing problem, while adding XR to WCAG, while we're improving the usability, while we're... you get my drift.


On Tue, Apr 27, 2021 at 9:52 PM Katie Haritos-Shea <ryladog@gmail.com> wrote:
I would say once again, let's move on to 3.0, and focus our energy on what is hard, but needed, in Accessibility.

* katie * 

Katie Haritos-Shea 
Principal ICT Accessibility Architect


Senior Product Manager/Compliance/Accessibility SME, 
Core Merchant Framework UX, Clover


W3C Advisory Committee Member and Representative for Knowbility 

WCAG/Section 508/ADA/AODA/QA/FinServ/FinTech/Privacy, IAAP CPACC+WAS = CPWA

Cell: 703-371-5545 | ryladog@gmail.com | Seneca, SC | LinkedIn Profile



People may forget exactly what it was that you said or did, but they will never forget how you made them feel.......

Our scars remind us of where we have been........they do not have to dictate where we are going.


On Tue, Apr 27, 2021 at 3:11 PM John Foliot <john@foliot.ca> wrote:
Hi Jon,

Thank-you for this. 

FWIW, I don't recall mentioning anything about "reducing the amount of sound requiring captions" - rather, I pointed to an ongoing activity already buried within our midst that is working on a testable requirement for captions in the XR (Virtual Reality/Augmented Reality) space - for which, today, we have nothing. NOTHING!

Will 'solving' that concern benefit all users? Nowhere near that, but it would at least be a first step forward in the right direction (IMHO). Getting a 'standard' that mandates captions in XR will benefit non-hearing users the most, whereas the ability to "...enlarged, change to high-contrast colors, or otherwise style..." caption text in the XR environment would likely be of more benefit to low-viz users (and others) but may be harder to technically achieve today - if at all. (ref: MAUR)  So then, does "Captions in XR" have to be all or nothing? Or is it "take what we can get today, and keep pushing for more"? (You can guess where I land there)

Assuming that one or more testable requirement(s) emerges from that effort, I'm simply suggesting that waiting for WCAG 3 to drop to implement that/those requirement(s) may not actually be the most beneficial approach - I believe if we have a testable requirement today, we should publish it in a timely fashion and NOT have it hinged on the release of WCAG 3 (which, you note, could still be another 3-5 years out). [insert trope about perfect being the enemy of the good here]

Jon, I'm not a huge fan of "living specs" when it comes to accessibility/WCAG (I continue to believe we still need firm snapshots to report against), but there *is* a reason why so much of the W3C has moved to that kind of model - tech changes faster than we can sometimes keep up with, so if something is "ready" and/or "stable" publish it and move forward (is all).

> "There is also intersectional issues such as intersection of sensory disabilities like low vision and hard of hearing and sensory and cognitive disabilities – without personalization or a non-binary model these great recommendations likely will not get consensus..."

Not to rain on anyone's parade, but at this point we have no idea whether or not some of what is being proposed as part of the "non-binary" model that would be *part* of WCAG 3 will get consensus either. This past week, I spent about a day and a half evaluating what we currently have as part of a sub-group activity (WCAG 3.0 Conformance Architecture Testing), and my results were far from encouraging (Example? We're currently not even sure if we're asking for 'clear words', 'common words', 'common clear words' or 'plain language' - all four terms are used, seemingly interchangeably, in the same requirement. And the current test suite resulted in the words 'fake', 'site' and 'accessibility' - amongst others - being rejected as jargon or technical terms). 

There is already more opinion and subjectivity in the emergent work than there is in WCAG 2.x, which I will argue makes conformance harder to achieve, and FAR harder to defend from a legal compliance perspective: it will be your experts versus our experts in front of the judge. (And that presumes that the regulators accept WCAG 3 - which is what we HOPE will happen, but we have no guarantees that they will, outside of an expressed desire to do so at this time).

JF


On Tue, Apr 27, 2021 at 1:38 PM Jonathan Avila <jon.avila@levelaccess.com> wrote:
Hi John, this actually moves us into trickier situations that increase the requirements on author or platforms with support for personalization.     I’m not opposed to additional requirements – I’ve tried to get them passed several times - but it’s been my experience that with the WCAG 2.x binary model it’s been extremely difficult to get them approved and we spend endless cycles trying to find someone that everyone will agree on in the current binary model and it can take years or the SC is then watered down or it’s dropped. 
 
The requirement you mention reducing the amount of sound requiring captions would have to be an option otherwise it would reduce accessiblity for people who are visually impaired.  So these types of things very much get into requiring personalization – which I know is a separate effort but one that will be needed to ensure access by a wide range of users with varying disabilities that often have needs that contradict the needs of other groups.   There is also intersectional issues such as intersection of sensory disabilities like low vision and hard of hearing and sensory and cognitive disabilities – without personalization or a non-binary model these great recommendations likely will not get consensus in WCAG 2.x and will take up a lot of time moving the timeline of WCAG 3.0 from 3-5 to 5+ years.  Is getting 5 to 6 new A or AA criteria in WCAG 2.3 of value over pushing WCAG 3.0 additional years down the road?  Maybe, maybe not?  If folks have to choose between 2.3 and 3.0 and their employment mandates they tackle 2.3 if it exists then that pulls their expertise away from 3.0 meaning 2 years from now they have to be brought back in to the 3.0 cycle when their expertise was needed earlier.
 
Jonathan
 
From: John Foliot <john@foliot.ca>
Sent: Tuesday, April 27, 2021 1:21 PM
To: WCAG <w3c-wai-gl@w3.org>
Subject: Fwd: XR Subgroup Update [April 27th 2021]
 
CAUTION: This email originated from outside of the organization. Do not click links or open attachments unless you recognize the sender and know the content is safe.
 
After today's call, I wanted to share this which I suspect many have not yet seen: an example of work already happening (somewhere within our group, but how many of you knew this was happening?) - and this is just related to XR captioning!
 
Suzanne is already working on a "testable statement", and I'd really be concerned if we didn't have a mechanism to add a new testable requirement like this into our larger effort, for the sole reason that we've collectively been working on other aspects of WCAG 3, so updating the existing corpus of requirements is "off limits". I assert we should be publishing regular updates of these types of tests in either or both WCAG 'frameworks' - the key being "timely" updates. (I note as well that the main reason we spun up the COGA, LV and Mobile TF's was because we let too much time lapse between updates of our spec in the past. I believe we should be trying to avoid that kind of bottleneck problem too.)
 
This is not about NOT turning our efforts to WCAG 3 - we need to get cracking in earnest there - but it's about staying focused on all of the moving parts, of which scalable, score-able and repeatable testing methods will always exist.
 

JF


---------- Forwarded message ---------
From: Michael Crabb (Staff) <m.z.crabb@dundee.ac.uk>
Date: Tue, Apr 27, 2021 at 8:28 AM
Subject: XR Subgroup Update [April 27th 2021]
To: Silver Task Force <public-silver@w3.org>

 


The Silver XR Subgroup is currently working asynchronously and is not carrying out weekly meetings. This email is intended as a brief update on work the group is carrying out.
 
1) @Suzanne Taylor has begun work on a method for the “Provides customization of caption timing to support people with limited manipulation, strength, or cognition” outcome. Please find time to give feedback on this if you can
https://docs.google.com/document/d/12o2S3XVltDgsMTjbHPPi0FMTJeoUAKqOrN8jpArkfFQ/edit#heading=h.ynbi2ooffkzm
 
2) There are currently 9 open issues<https://github.com/w3c/silver/labels/Subgroup%3A%20XR%20-%20Captions> on the w3c/silver github repository that relate to XR/captions. Initial responses have been created to 8 of these and are available below. Please take time to review/comment on these before they are placed on GitHub on 29th April.
     *   Issue #259 - https://docs.google.com/document/d/1om7h7HE-9sIPeBRmJrBSESQWsMGH8PysiWCpAUWXBUQ/edit#heading=h.4vci8db4rzyf
     *   Issue #360 - https://docs.google.com/document/d/1om7h7HE-9sIPeBRmJrBSESQWsMGH8PysiWCpAUWXBUQ/edit#heading=h.74t0jj1f9zsv
     *   Issue #379 - https://docs.google.com/document/d/1om7h7HE-9sIPeBRmJrBSESQWsMGH8PysiWCpAUWXBUQ/edit#heading=h.md2t9liawuub
     *   Issue #415 - https://docs.google.com/document/d/1om7h7HE-9sIPeBRmJrBSESQWsMGH8PysiWCpAUWXBUQ/edit#heading=h.puvqxs9jitu6
     *   Issue #420 - https://docs.google.com/document/d/1om7h7HE-9sIPeBRmJrBSESQWsMGH8PysiWCpAUWXBUQ/edit#heading=h.owhufmt71jiw
     *   Issue #421 - https://docs.google.com/document/d/1om7h7HE-9sIPeBRmJrBSESQWsMGH8PysiWCpAUWXBUQ/edit#heading=h.f42tzcuviq8
     *   Issue #438 - https://docs.google.com/document/d/1om7h7HE-9sIPeBRmJrBSESQWsMGH8PysiWCpAUWXBUQ/edit#heading=h.99dkihi2fd7k
     *   Issue #474 - https://docs.google.com/document/d/1om7h7HE-9sIPeBRmJrBSESQWsMGH8PysiWCpAUWXBUQ/edit#heading=h.jeaggtnahirc
 
3)  Work is underway on organising our Working Document https://docs.google.com/document/d/1om7h7HE-9sIPeBRmJrBSESQWsMGH8PysiWCpAUWXBUQ/edit> in order to provide clarity for short/medium term subgroup plans.
     *   Our current goal is to finish initial drafts for guidelines relating to subtitling in XR
     *   We need to start thinking about caption accuracy and if this is something that should be included for WCAG3
        *   Mike to explore methods that have been used to carry this out previously
     *   If you would like to participate then please reach out or visit the working document
 
Kind Regards
 
Mike Crabb
 
 

The University of Dundee is a registered Scottish Charity, No: SC015096

 
--

John Foliot | Senior Industry Specialist, Digital Accessibility


"I made this so long because I did not have time to make it shorter." - Pascal "links go places, buttons do things"


--


John Foliot | Senior Industry Specialist, Digital Accessibility
"I made this so long because I did not have time to make it shorter." - Pascal "links go places, buttons do things"


--


Wilco Fiers
Axe-core product owner - Facilitator ACT Task Force - Co-chair ACT-Rules




--
John Foliot | Senior Industry Specialist, Digital Accessibility
"I made this so long because I did not have time to make it shorter." - Pascal "links go places, buttons do things"