Re: After today's call (Comments to John Foliot's alternative scoring proposal)

On 12/08/2021 22:01, John Foliot wrote:
> So yes, I am proposing that we only "measure and score" that which can 
> be accurately and uncontroversially measured and scored; that as a goal 
> we seek to squeeze outthe known subjectivity we currently have in WCAG 
> 2.x even further, and that we avoid at all costs adding more 
> subjectivity to the scoring and conformance
Just tangentially on this particular point then, considering that even a 
seemingly simple SC like 1.1.1 in WCAG 2.X requires a huge amount of 
subjective and contextual analysis from an auditor (and two auditors may 
still disagree in the end) once you move beyond a binary "has an 
alternative / doesn't have an alternative" and into "but is the 
alternative actually appropriate/sufficient/comprehensive" ... I have my 
own doubts that this could ever be properly achieved going forward. 
Unless you remove all instances where a human has to make a value 
judgement, and reduce all guidelines to purely technical/mechanistic 
ones (which yes, will then be nice and unequivocal, but also won't have 
much relevance to a user's actual experience when using the content).

But yes, I'm sure that industry/big players would love this sort of 
mechanistic approach that can be applied at scale by just running 
something through Axe or Lighthouse or whatever. Or something that can 
just be remediated by putting a mechanistic plaster/overlay on top of an 
existing site.

P
-- 
Patrick H. Lauke

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Received on Thursday, 12 August 2021 21:38:31 UTC