RE: Use Cases for partial conformance

My initial take on Jeanne's proposal is that I like the idea of dispensing with "partial conformance." Hopefully, with well developed criteria regarding applicability of success criteria, the key use cases can be handled without the necessity of partial conformance. Also, my assumption is that people are still free to explain to others the degree or senses in which their user agent's capabilities match those required by UAAG2; that should not need to be covered by the guidelines.

-----Original Message-----
From: Jeanne Spellman [mailto:jeanne@w3.org] 
Sent: Tuesday, January 22, 2013 5:40 PM
To: User Agent Working Group
Subject: Use Cases for partial conformance

This is in response to Greg's email of 21 January:
http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/w3c-wai-ua/2013JanMar/0010.html

and is based on followup discussion with Greg on 21 January and Jim on
22 January. Notes from the conversation that Jim and I had:
http://www.w3.org/2013/01/22-ua-minutes.html

IMO, we are creating a complex partial conformance structure that could haunt us because we are trying to satisfy hypothetical edge cases.  I would like to propose that we list the user cases that partial conformance must satisfy, and that we find a solution for these use cases and not the edge cases. Greater complexity does not serve us in the long run, when people are trying to meet these guidelines. Please suggest additional use cases that I didn't remember.

What are the problems we are trying to solve with Partial Conformance?

Use Cases: (Full Conformance?)

1) full featured user agents who conform  (full regular conformance)

2) full featured user agents who are missing a few SC, but could conform with external extensions
   - After a lot of thought back and forth, I propose that we not address this as a needed use case, and leave it up to the browsers to acquire or license themselves what is needed for their product to be compliant. It's simpler and puts the responsibility where it belongs, on the vendor.

3) limited user agents who are constrained by the type of content they access -- e.g. media players
  - I propose that these be fully conformant based on the success criteria that apply to the content they render.  [See #7 in the Required Components of an UAAG Conformance claim quoted below]
  - I think this is where PDF readers would fit

4) standalone software that has a user agent component (e.g. Microsoft Word).
  - I propose that the user agent component has full conformance to UAAG, but the rest of the product can conform to different guidelines. 
(this addresses the problem of 3rd party Word macros)
- should it also apply to the Word interface wrapping the "browser" 
interface or should this specifically be excluded?

Use Cases: (Partial Conformance?)

5) Mobile apps with constrained content -- e.g. the "American Airlines" 
app.
- I think this is a moot point - apps are becoming increasingly media rich and full featured. Look at Facebook app or LinkedIn (HTML5 app). 
Mobile players with constrained media types (e.g. youtube players) are covered under use case 3) above with full conformance.

6) User agent component - an extension or plugin that is used in within a user agent to provide a feature needed to meet an SC, e.g. "mouseless browsing" extension to Firefox.  See Jan's proposal for partial conformance http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/w3c-wai-ua/2013JanMar/0003.html
  - the extension might not meet UAAG in order to provide the necessary service.  Why would we include extensions in UAAG but not assistive technology?

7) User agent component - a full featured browser or player that is missing some SC but doesn't want to state a specific extension that could complete it.
  - I propose dropping this, and making the browsers responsible for meeting UAAG. See use case 2)

8) full or limited user agents who are dependent on the underlying platform for some SC.  See Jan's proposal for partial conformance.
- Could these be handled under full conformance by including an example in #7 below?

Did I forget any?
----------------

 From "Required Components of an UAAG Conformance Claim"
7. Declarations: For each success criterion: A declaration of whether or not the success criterion has been satisfied; or A declaration that the success criterion is not applicable and a rationale for why not.

Received on Thursday, 24 January 2013 17:53:41 UTC