Re: People for the "spike"

Thank you to everyone who’s volunteered to join the team exploring “how to assign provisions to many levels”. I’ve just sent you a kickoff email with some notes to get us started.

If anyone else in the working group is interested in joining this team, please give me a holler.

Cheers,

Adam Page, CPWA
Manager, Accessibility Center of Excellence
Hilton. For the Stay.<http://www.hilton.com/>
From: Abou-Zahra, Shadi <sabouzah@amazon.at>
Date: Thursday, May 14, 2026 at 7:06 AM
To: Alastair Campbell <alastair.campbell@thisisgain.com>; Gregg Vanderheiden RTF <gregg@raisingthefloor.org>
Cc: WCAG list <w3c-wai-gl@w3.org>
Subject: Re: People for the "spike"

Hi Alastair,

I didn't understand that the "multiple levels approach" was limited to assigning provisions to different levels, I was putting it in context of exploring the use of paths/task flows as well. I'm happy to contribute to this exploration but it is not what I was suggesting.

Where will the exploration of paths/task flows (resolution from day one) take place? I'd be happy to contribute to that too.

Best,
  Shadi


---

Shadi Abou-Zahra

Amazon Devices and Services

Principal Accessibility Standards and Policy Manager

---

________________________________
From: Alastair Campbell <alastair.campbell@thisisgain.com>
Sent: Thursday, May 14, 2026 12:33
To: Gregg Vanderheiden RTF <gregg@raisingthefloor.org>; Abou-Zahra, Shadi <sabouzah@amazon.at>
Cc: WCAG list <w3c-wai-gl@w3.org>
Subject: RE: [EXTERNAL] People for the "spike"


CAUTION: This email originated from outside of the organization. Do not click links or open attachments unless you can confirm the sender and know the content is safe.

Hi Gregg, Shadi,

On day one we resolved<https://www.w3.org/2026/05/11-ag-minutes.html#b8bb> that we would:
"Adjust paths/task flows idea to: 1) Explore paths/task flows as a unit of conformance in scope, 2) Explore one or more levels of partial conformance that include paths/ task flows. 3) Explore paths / task flows in external documentation such as policy, wcag-em, etc."

We did also poll the idea<https://www.w3.org/2026/05/11-ag-minutes.html#10006> of using “essential or critical paths” to enable requiring those as part of a conformance claim, but that did not get support.

We will look at part 2 of the resolution (for partial conformance), but that isn’t the topic of this email.

The small groups proposal here comes from the last resolution on day 2<https://www.w3.org/2026/05/12-ag-minutes.html#5481>:
"we will separate into small teams to explore 1) concrete proposals for PTC scoring, 2) multiple levels approach, and 3) multiple documents to augment the conformance model”

This email thread is for parts (1) and (2) of the resolution, the 3rd one will be organised separately.

This scope of this is to test those two ideas, so the multiple-levels task is just for assigning provisions to multiple (i.e. more than 3) levels.

Thank you to those who replied already, Adam or I will be in touch.

Kind regards,

-Alastair


From: Gregg Vanderheiden RTF <gregg@raisingthefloor.org>
Date: Thursday, 14 May 2026 at 07:52
To: Abou-Zahra, Shadi <sabouzah@amazon.at>
Cc: Alastair Campbell <alastair.campbell@thisisgain.com>; Hidde de Vries <hidde@hiddedevries.nl>; Adam Page <adam.page@hilton.com>; AGWG Chairs <group-ag-chairs@w3.org>; John Kirkwood <kirkwood@citymouse.com>; Lisa Seeman <lisa1seeman@gmail.com>; Delisi, Jennie (MNIT) <jennie.delisi@state.mn.us>; Jeroen Hulscher <jlhulscher@gmail.com>; Andrew Kirkpatrick <andrew.kirkpatrick@evinced.com>; WCAG list <w3c-wai-gl@w3.org>
Subject: Re: People for the "spike"

I  thought we determined in day 1 that any use of flows  or paths was not something we wanted to pursue.  That allowing conformance to paths or to component types meant that we believed that people with disabilities did not need to have access to everything that people without disabilities had access to.

We did say that it could be useful in talking about where to start.  But that would be for a) educational - where to start  or  b) in the policy document about where to start and how to being when handling large bolluses or acquisitions - not for conformance.    And not for scoping.

On day 2 we talked about following up on two ideas -  with the suggestion that they needed to be developed further and then represesnted after the ideas were tested and the details worked out to see if the ideas held up when trying to apply them to all of the provisions.

Both ideas were focused on creating ways to make it easier to track progress than have an all or none conformance as only measure of progress.

1) was the idea of having more levels so people could have more steps.  It was not determined if that meant  more beyond basic or it meant levels below and above basic confomrnace.

2) was the idea, that alongside of conformace,  a mechanism measuring progress could be created  - a “Progress toward conformance” measure”

and two teams were called on to refine and test and show exactly how the concepts might work - testing the ideas on the full set of guidelines (to see if they worked or collapsed when actually tried with more than a select sample)


at least that is my recollection.

Best

Gregg

On May 13, 2026, at 3:02 PM, Abou-Zahra, Shadi <sabouzah@amazon.at> wrote:

Hi Alastair,

I have slightly different recollection but maybe I misunderstood. I believe there was also an agreement on day one to further explore task flows. On day two, I believe that one of the agreements was to explore multiple levels of conformance. I had raised the idea that this might be done through a combination of task flows and assigning provisions to levels, not only by assigning provisions to levels. Can you/Adam clarify the scope of #1?

Thanks,
  Shadi

---
Shadi Abou-Zahra
Amazon Devices and Services
Principal Accessibility Standards and Policy Manager
---
________________________________
From: Alastair Campbell <alastair.campbell@thisisgain.com<mailto:alastair.campbell@thisisgain.com>>
Sent: Wednesday, May 13, 2026 22:39
To: Abou-Zahra, Shadi <sabouzah@amazon.at<mailto:sabouzah@amazon.at>>; Gregg Vanderheiden RTF <gregg@raisingthefloor.org<mailto:gregg@raisingthefloor.org>>; Hidde de Vries <hidde@hiddedevries.nl<mailto:hidde@hiddedevries.nl>>; Adam Page <adam.page@hilton.com<mailto:adam.page@hilton.com>>
Cc: AGWG Chairs <group-ag-chairs@w3.org<mailto:group-ag-chairs@w3.org>>; John Kirkwood <kirkwood@citymouse.com<mailto:kirkwood@citymouse.com>>; Lisa Seeman <lisa1seeman@gmail.com<mailto:lisa1seeman@gmail.com>>; Delisi, Jennie (MNIT) <jennie.delisi@state.mn.us<mailto:jennie.delisi@state.mn.us>>; Jeroen Hulscher <jlhulscher@gmail.com<mailto:jlhulscher@gmail.com>>; Andrew Kirkpatrick <andrew.kirkpatrick@evinced.com<mailto:andrew.kirkpatrick@evinced.com>>; WCAG list <w3c-wai-gl@w3.org<mailto:w3c-wai-gl@w3.org>>
Subject: [EXTERNAL] People for the "spike"

CAUTION: This email originated from outside of the organization. Do not click links or open attachments unless you can confirm the sender and know the content is safe.

Hi everyone,

And sorry for the subject line, no physical spikes are involved! (But did it get your attention?)

As discussed in the conformance meeting on Tuesday, we’d like to put together a couple of groups to focus on two particular problems:


  1.
How to assign provisions to many levels.
  2.
How to create a "progress towards conformance" score.

There is more to both proposals than just those aspects, but these are core issues that need to be addressed in order for the fuller proposals to be feasible.

1) For the first group, Adam has volunteered to run/support things from a chair point of view. The obvious other people to join are Shadi and Hidde (who volunteered in the meeting). If there are others who would like to join, please email me. However, 3 is enough if Shadi and Hidde have time in the next couple of weeks. If we get a lot of people we might separate it and have multiple groups working in parallel.

I suggest you make a copy of the provision management sheet<https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1V7u1tjVsxL9NgN9ySoUtt0gmYReXSs0Y9Bc_R2RByzg/edit?gid=0#gid=0>, save it into the conformance folder<https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1n7Jso4p5wQ9ItSiS3aHPNyjN6tZy5a_R>, remove the sheets/columns you don’t need, and go from there. The deliverables would be a list of provisions in their levels, the criteria used, and a short presentation or bit of text on how it went and any thoughts for the group.


2) For the second group, I’ll run/support as a chair, and the obvious other person to join is Gregg (I didn’t see any other volunteers from the meetings). If there are others who would like to join, please email me.

We can use the provision management sheet, and also some of the previous proposals<https://github.com/w3c/wcag3/wiki/Conformance-Proposals-2018-to-present> included scoring mechanisms. We can also use previous test materials to show how the scoring would work for different types of site, criteria used, and short presentation.

This is intended to be short: Group 2 will report back on May 26th, group 1 on June 9th.

Kind regards,

-Alastair

--

alastairc.uk<https://alastairc.uk/> / www.thisisgain.com<http://www.nomensa.com/>




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Amazon Development Center Austria GmbH
Brueckenkopfgasse 1
8020 Graz
Oesterreich
Sitz in Graz
Firmenbuchnummer: FN 439453 f
Firmenbuchgericht: Landesgericht fuer Zivilrechtssachen Graz



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