Wilco: I took action to see which kind of notes we have and in which rules they are
<Wilco> https://act-rules.github.io/rules/97a4e1
Wilco: There are more than I thought
... For the first one, I think changing the title and description we can resolve the issue.
... Anyone thinks that with changes to the title and description we still need that note?
Shadi: Do we remember who suggested that note?
Wilco: I think the request camed from AG
MaryJom: It was because of inconsistency of where and why we put the notes.
<Wilco> https://act-rules.github.io/rules/4e8ab6
Wilco: For this one I am not sure if this is a scope note.
... It is about WAI-ARIA, kind of relates, but it is different.
MaryJom: It is more related to the differences in the specs
Wilco: Is this something we want to keep?
Trevor: Does it need to be removed or we could move this to somewhere else?
Shadi: Could this be an assumption? There is an expected behavior because of a spec.
... The assumptions is that states and properties that are empty do not have a default value
Wilco: Default values don't exist anymore in 2.2 but the rule still uses them.
... Maybe the piece about the default values will not be needed.
... As soon as ARIA 11.2 is out that part may fall under accessibility support.
Charu: I think we could adjust that expectation. We need to be prepared for spec changes and decide in which section we should reffer to them. Accessibility support sounds good to me.
Trevor: I think for this rule the note is very educational, wonder how educational we should be
Wilco: I put this as a reminder for people who may be maintaining this in the future.
Cathy: Could it be put in the expectation?
Wilco: We try not to do that as that would be a requirement in a note.
... We have a lot of things of this nature where we explain things about the standards.
... One reason for these is to make it clearer during the review process.
MaryJom: Maybe instead of a note we should mark these things as ARIA 1.1 and when ARIA 1.2 is out that would help us revisit them if needed.
... What if we say something like "when ARIA 1.2 is out there will not be a default value"?
<Wilco> https://act-rules.github.io/rules/36b590
Wilco: First note in the expectation 1. It is more of a "not in scope" situation.
MaryJom: Could we put this in the assumptions?
Wilco: Not really, if it is in a different page, then it is not tested.
Charu: Maybe in the applicability?
Trevor: What scoping happens in applicability and what scoping happens in these notes?
Wilco: These notes are thought more as clarification, no scoping is intended for these notes.
Shadi: I also like this to be in the applicability. The things this rule is looking at are indeed in the same page.
Wilco: we did move this from the applicability to the expectation.
Charu: Could we include this in the expectations so that it clarifies the scope?
Wilco: That will be helpful.
Cathy: Would it be true for expectation 1 only?
Wilco: That would be true for all of them.
Cathy: It seems to me that the description defines the scope of the rule, so if we have to define things that are out of scope, they should be also in the description
Wilco: If we make the expectation a little bit clear, we could get rid of this one. Anyone disagrees?
<Wilco> https://act-rules.github.io/rules/80af7b
Wilco: This one is a very explicit scope note in the applicability.
Shadi: Can this be done in the title?
Wilco: I am not too sure this note adds much.
... From the different notes that I have looked at, this seems the most out-of-scope one. It is true for all our rules that they are applicable for a given set of technologies.
Shadi: What if in the future we have a rule testing the same for a different technology? Differentiating it in the tittle that this is technology specific, maybe that could help.
Wilco: Then we would need to specify technology for each of the rules.
Charu: The applicability makes it clear that it applies only to HTML
... I don't see that we need that note.
Shadi: Agree. The authors of this rule are from a monitor body, maybe the information was not as clear to them.
Charu: Can we just say "The rule only applies to HTML or SVG elements" in the applicability?
Wilco: All that information is there, it's just that it is not put together that way.
... Something like this can be explained in an understanding document. This is applied to a specific technology, this is not a complete test... etc.
Shadi: Why don't we add "HTML and SVG element"
<Wilco> https://www.w3.org/WAI/GL/2016/WD-WCAG20-TECHS-20160105/H2
Wilco: We would need to do it everywhere. Do the techniques do that?
Shadi: Yes.
<Wilco> https://act-rules.github.io/rules/2779a5
Wilco: First note in the applicability.
Shadi: Is this not an assumption?
Wilco: It could be. Assumptions are either about the page or about the accessibility requirement. Since this is about the accessibility requirement, it could be an assumption.
... Second note in expectation one is also interesting. What we are testing is out of the HTML spec
... My takeaways from this conversation is that some of these could be solved by expanding different pieces of the rule: title, description, assumptions, understanding documents.. but not all of them can be solved this way.
... We could bet rid of a number of the notes we have but others should be kept.
Daniel: Acknowledging that we can get rid of some of them but other need to stick would give us clues on why they are there and how we can solve them.
Wilco: CG should be more mindful about how they use notes.