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

Hey Wayne,

Thanks for your in depth analyses. I agree with your suggestion to
reevaluate the idea of technology agnostic. The problem of that has always
been we've been catering to the lowest common denominator. When WCAG 2.0
came out we also sort of all collectively decided to ignore that Flash has
next to no taxonomy - The only thing it knew of widgets was buttons and
links. We got around that by putting "markup languages" into some SCs, but
it's not great.

Some of the ideas that are going into Silver support this. With WCAG 2.1
we've done the same thing with the single key shortcuts. That's clearly a
technical limitation of Dragon. That should not have been made the problem
of a million web developers in my opinion.


Regarding ambiguity: In the ACT Rules Format we have actually broken this
problem into two parts. Whether or not a rule is applicable has to be
unambiguous, but the actual requirement is required to ambiguous, provided
there aren't obvious multiple viable interpretations, and it doesn't use
subjective terms such as "good", "clear". I think this is helping us define
much more reliable test procedures than we've had for WCAG 2.0 before.

Wilco

On Mon, May 21, 2018 at 9:49 PM, Wayne Dick <wayneedick@gmail.com> wrote:

> Hi Glenda and Wilco,
> Here are the rest of my thoughts.
>
> A11y Wars: Review 2
>
> Before starting I would like to repeat my appreciation of this analysis.
> Superb work!
> Ideal
>
> When we speak of ideal we should be sure that it is ideal. The
> intervention must be proven to be effective, and, demonstrated to be
> achievable. Enlargement to 400% with word wrapping is not an ideal for
> print on paper because it is not possible.
>
> One ideal that COGA and LVTF put forward in the 2.1 dialogue was
> personalization. Personalization is an ideal because it is demonstratively
> effective. It can also be achieved with the addition of semantic
> information to content and browser extensions that interpret the new
> semantics. It will be interesting to identify other ideals as we proceed.
>
> Personalization is an ideal now, but it has extremely high priority.
> Personalization is necessary for people with cognitive and low vision
> disabilities to achieve literacy.
> Priority
>
> Access to literacy is high priority. Also, when a person is taking an
> examination of proficiency, the need for unambiguously readable content is
> essential to fair assessment. Access to commerce is also critical, as well
> as technology that is necessary for employment. If a guideline that claims
> accessibility does not support life functions at this priority level, one
> can hardly call it accessible.
>
>
> WCAG Assumptions Technology Agnostic
>
> This goal is not an ideal because it is unattainable. People develop
> technology to meet needs that are not met by other technology. Almost by
> definition, this will enhance some capabilities and limit others. If we
> limit our accessibility ideal to those that do not conflict with the
> limitations of every technology, we will wind up with accessibility
> guidelines that do not do enough to attain basic life priorities.
>
> Let us consider the difference between PDF and HTML / CSS / JavaScript.
> Both technologies support print communication, but PDF focuses on
> preserving visual presentation across diverse platforms, and HTML / CSS /
> JavaScript focus on conveying content across diverse platforms with some
> flexibility in visual presentation. Is it possible to apply the same
> personalization rules for visual content to PDF and HTML / CSS / JavaScript?
> Is it possible to do the same for mobile phones and desktop computers?
>
> Technology agnosticism needs reexamination because ideals that can be met
> on one technology may be impossible on another. Guideline ideals need to
> adapt to variable capabilities of technology so that user priorities can be
> met.
> Ambiguity
>
> I had a very good friend, Alby Burke. He was a constitutional historian.
> When WCAG 2.0 was about to be released, I told Alby about our goal of
> unambiguous criteria. He laughed at me. Then Alby explained that law
> frequently does not fits some real situations. Law must design ways to
> interpret the necessary ambiguity that will occur in real cases. The
> Understanding documents are examples of methods to interpret these real
> ambiguities. The A11y Wars paper is another. What is certain is that we
> will have ambiguity. All we can do is identify when we are at that place in
> a given case, and make the best guess we can from our experienced. There
> will always be disagreement because the only certainty is that ambiguity
> will always occur.
>
> This impacts the notion of testability and automated testing. It would be
> great to have everything testable and even better automated, but this is
> always impossible in ambiguous cases. Not only are there cases that cannot
> be resolved mechanically, there are cases that cannot be resolved by any
> logical process. Guidelines like the A11y Wars papers help us resolve these
> issues along agreed upon lines of analysis.
>
> When Alby laughed at me, I was hurt. It was 2008 and we had worked so long
> to get this right. Looking back, I am grateful for the honesty. Alby was
> not a policy writer, he was a tester of actual cases against the letter of
> the law. One of the big advances in developing accessibility guidelines is
> our awareness that different roles in the accessibility process will frame
> the guidelines differently. What is clear to the AGWG will be opaque or
> even ambiguous to a practitioner.
> Congratulations Again, Wayne
>
> On Mon, May 21, 2018 at 2:09 AM Alastair Campbell <alastc@gmail.com>
> wrote:
>
>> 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
>>
>>


-- 
*Wilco Fiers*
Senior Accessibility Engineer - Co-facilitator WCAG-ACT - Chair Auto-WCAG