Re: for content review: Involving Users in Evaluating Web Accessibility

Hi, Barry,

> That's my tuppence worth!

Wow, that's a whole lot for just a tuppence! :)
Thanks a million (to use another Irish phrase:) for the review and easy to follow comments.

I've incorporated pretty much all of your comments. I expect to post a revised version later today, after another complete editing pass.

Thanks,
~ Shawn

Barry McMullin wrote:
> Hi All -
> 
> Apologies for the late response to this (so feel free to ignore
> on that ground alone!).
> 
> I have mainly minor suggestions, listed below.
> 
> Aside from these detailed suggestions, I'm still concerned about
> the question of enriching the resource with links to external
> resources; but I accept that that has to be deferred for separate
> discussion in a wider context.
> 
> Change suggestions:
> 
> * priority: [editor's discretion]
> * location: Section "Range of User Involvement", end of first paragraph.
> * current wording: "... extreme</strong>s"
> * suggested revision: "... extremes</strong>"
> * rationale: typo
> 
> * priority: [editor's discretion]
> * location: Section "Range of User Involvement", last paragraph.
> * current wording: "However, formal usability testing not required in
> most cases."
> * suggested revision: "However, formal usability testing is not required in
> most cases."
> * rationale: typo
> 
> 
> * priority: [editor's discretion]
> * location: Section "Include Diverse Users", first paragraph.
> * current wording: ""visual disability" includes people who been
>   totally blind since birth"
> * suggested revision: ""visual disability" includes people who
>   have been totally blind since birth"
> * rationale: typo
> 
> * priority: [editor's discretion]
> * location: Section "Include Diverse Users", second paragraph.
> * current wording: "avoid the pitfall of only including people who are blind."
> * suggested revision: "avoid the pitfall of, for example,
>   including only people who are blind."
> * rationale: I agree with the concern expressed by Sailesh
>   Panchang that this point needs careful wording so as not to
>   generate a wrong interpretation (for example, toward
>   deliberately NOT including blind users!).  But I also know this
>   text has already been through several iterations, and I don't
>   want to extend it excessively with further long-wided
>   qualifications. So my suggestion above is just
>   one further attempt at slightly greater clarity.
> 
> * priority: [editor's discretion]
> * location: Section "Include Diverse Users", final paragraph.
> * current wording: not applicable
> * suggested revision: Addition of final sentence reading:
> 
>   "Remember that user accessibility testing is never a
>   <strong>substitute</strong> for <a href="conformance">expert
>   evaluation of technical conformance to guidelines;</a> rather,
>   the two are <strong>complementary</strong> aspects of
>   comprehensive evaluation."
> 
> * rationale: I feel there is still a need to make this point more
>   explicitly just here - despite the fact that a very similar
>   thing (with a similar link) has already been said at the end of
>   the introduction.
> 
> 
> * priority: [editor's discretion]
> * location: Section "Understanding [Findings/Results/Issues]"
> * current wording: Section title "Understanding [Findings/Results/Issues]"
> * suggested revision: "Diagnosing Accessibility Problems"
> * rationale: We already have two options for the title of this;
>   just throught I'd add another one!  But seriously, I think
>   the word "diagnose" might work slightly better? I definitely do
>   not like the subsconscious effect of the phrase "Placing the Blame".
> 
> * priority: [editor's discretion]
> * location: Section "Understanding [Findings/Results/Issues]",
>   first paragraph, second last sentence.
> * current wording: "Users are likely to identify accessibility
>     issues in different components; for example, when evaluating
>     a Web site, the user might find an accessibility problem with
>     the AT."
> * suggested revision: Insert dditional, new sentence after above:
> 
>   Note that an individual user will not necessarily be able to
>   accurately identify or separate the contributions of the
>   separate components. Indeed, any given user may not even be
>   consciously aware of their distinct roles.
> 
> * rationale: This is an attempt to clarify a confusion I
>   experience in reading the sentence that is currently there.  It
>   seems to read as if the user CAN reasonably be expected to
>   identify which distinct component is responsible for a
>   particular difficulty.  But I presume that is not something we
>   mean to imply?  I would certainly only expect the most
>   sophisticated users to be able to do that with any degree of
>   accuracy.  But my suggested revision is still rather clumsy, so
>   maybe there is a shorter, more elegant, way of expressing this.
> 
> * priority: [editor's discretion]
> * location: Section "Understanding [Findings/Results/Issues]",
>   list, final list item.
> * current wording: "Web site - most problems will probably be
>   things that you can fix in the Web site."
> * suggested revision: Not sure!
> * rationale: Re-reading this, I found I no longer understood what
>   we were trying to get across with this point. As it stands
>   might be read as saying that, of the various components
>   involved, the web site is most commonly ("most problems") the
>   one at fault.  I'm not sure I could agree with that anyway; but
>   if that were the intention, it needs more clear expression.
> 
> That's my tuppence worth!
> 
> 
> Best - Barry.
> 
>

Received on Wednesday, 28 September 2005 16:50:59 UTC