Re: [White paper] A11Y Wars: The Accessibility Interpretation Problem

Hi Glenda & Wilco,

Great paper, I was nodding vigorously in several places :-)

It's a good time to make these points, as it mixes well with some
thoughts I've had about Silver & the direction guidelines &
conformance could go in future.

In some ways this builds on the levels A / AA / AAA in WCAG 2.x, so if
in Silver those levels were removed, I don't think using
minimum/optimised/idealised would work without the WCAG levels in
place as well? Unless the AAA type criteria were aligned with
'idealised'?

Also, there is another concept I'd like to bring-in at some stage:
Analysis of barriers by their impact on the user-journey.

When talking to clients, a key aspect of prioritisation for
accessibility fixes is what impact that issue (barrier) has on the
user-journey of the site.

Two extreme examples would be:
- Missing alt text on a partner logo in the footer of a website, which
is unlikely to be noticed by any real user, and certainly doesn't
impact their journey.
- A keyboard in-accessible 'next' button on a form every user must
fill in to proceed.

Both are level A fails, but the priority of the two should be very different.

At least for organisations that optimise their user-journeys for their
target users, this type of analysis is fairly straightforward and (at
optimised & idealised levels) maps well to whether people will
struggle.

Kind regards,

-Alastair

Received on Monday, 21 May 2018 08:54:18 UTC