| EOWG
WAI Gallery -- Planning
Goal | Approach | Who's Interested | Review | Background |
Cautions
Last updated 23 August 2002 by Judy Brewer (jbrewer @w3.org)
NOTE! Some content on this page has been updated with information
from the EOWG meeting on 29-30 July 2002. Remainder of content is from
20 January 2000 (in other words, old). Comments to wai-eo-editors @w3.org
To develop a showcase of Web sites, implementing the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 1.0
at a Double-A Conformance level, that includes a variety of different types
of Web sites, different complexity of design, and represents accessible Web
sites in a variety of countries and languages; without inadvertently endorsing
inaccessible sites.
[Note: this section is old. For new info, see 'proceed with caution'
section below.] Please read through the companion page to this, "Review of Web Site Accessibility
-- Planning" [including July 2002 updates] before reading this part.
We should probably develop this in a multi-stage process, so that we can
get something available soon. One way to do it would be to:
- Put out a call for nominations to the WAI Interest Group; establish and
recruit people onto the (soon to be created) wai-review@w3.org list to
do an informal review & discussion, in public space, of the sites
that have initially been nominated; and then identify a small team of
around five experienced reviewers do a final pass over the sites that
make it through the wai-review@w3.org discussion. They could then select
a diverse spread of ten to twenty different sites. The sites could be
mounted in "WAI Gallery" space under W3C/WAI, and we'd attach a disclaimer
saying that these had undergone only informal review so far and that
we'll be updating the gallery and making it more formal over time.
- The second stage could be updating and expanding the gallery
with sites nominated from the Review Teams,
and with sites that have been submitted directly to a contact point on
the WAI Gallery and then vetted through one or more Review Teams. We'd
want to end up with a gallery that shows different types of sites -- e-commerce,
portals, reference, simple home pages, etc. -- with everything from
sophisticated flashy design to very basic design; and that shows sites
from different countries and in different languages. There'd need to be
some kind of communication with Web masters whose sites were going into
the gallery; and disclaimers about the sites changing during the period
when they were in the gallery.
- Third stage could be rotating sites in and out of the gallery
over time, to ensure an on-going incentive of potential "showcase" exposure
for new sites; and archiving the older sites with whatever notes might
be appropriate. We might want to consider archiving them with frozen "snapshots"
in case their accessibility level changes over time.
- An on-going parallel activity could be enabling a feedback mechanism,
so anyone viewing the gallery could provide feedback on how the sites
in the gallery worked for them. This feedback would be useful to the
Web Content Guidelines Working Group,
to help identify barriers that WCAG may not have addressed adequately;
and the feedback would also be useful for the Evaluation and Repair Tools Interest
Group as it considers requirements for new and better assessment
tools, since it could help identify WCAG checkpoint non-conformance
that isn't being caught by existing evaluation tools and strategies.
[Note: old material, see next section] There will be some overlap here
with the people listed as interested in the Review Teams
on the companion page to this, however we may get other organizations involved
as well.
Cautionary Approaches
[notes from 29-30 July 2002: these represent cautionary ideas, not consensed;
many participants in meeting favored using multiple cautionary approaches
at once]] [see below for sample framework]
- reader has to wade through disclaimers before reaching gallery
- reader has to actively acknowledge the disclaimer
- disclaimers and associated policies relating to the gallery are pre-negotiated
with organization's rep
- [controversial] say something about what's being highlighted on a
site
- every site would have to be re-evaluated any time there is ANY change
- set up an automatic eval 3x/day
- hourly checks! take advantage of those automated tools
- [no agreement] link to gallery at another organization that holds
the responsibility
- use the rotation concept with a history of previous to avoid anti-competitive
accusations within a given industry sector
- require that sites also have pics or ncsa? ratings that ensure that
the content is palatable
- shift the responsibility to the featured site -- have them have an
intro page for accessibility, describing their goals & policies, specifically
their participation in the gallery & their commitment
- ensure human checks as well -- rigorous ones! to make sure that things
have not changed too much....
- [controversial] gallery of home pages only, no depth of layers
- [controversial] go back to the concept of cached pages only
- only list sites that have a real live person behind the contact
- confidentiality on the part of the reviewers -- if we are doing this
by category.. keeping the names of the reviewers confidential...
- require versioning control variation... history of versioning
- come up with a clear published standard for selection, and/or a 'no
obligation to include your site' policy
- have a disclaimer that these sites are not necessarily the best for
usability, etc,. clarify that are pointing to them for accessibility but not
for usability.
sample framework, integrating some of these approaches
(proposal, no consensus)
- Gallery must be entered through a disclaimer statement which the user
must acknowledge (accessibly!), and which includes:
- notice that W3C does not endorse the organization, only provides
this as a design example
- notice that W3C cannot guarantee the accessibility of the site, and
assumes no liability for any accessibility failures
- notice that W3C is not obligated to include any given nominated site,
regardless of its accessibility level, nor to maintain a site in the gallery
indefinitely
- notice that W3C attempts to show a diversity of sites, and that those
may from time to time include only one, or more than one, site from within
a given industry sector
- notice that the sites chosen are chosen to demonstrate implementation
of WCAG 1.0, and inclusion in the Gallery is not an indication of their status
with regard to other design criteria, such as usability, etc.
- notice that a site not being listed does not mean that it is not
WCAG 1.0 conformant (W3C/WAI has limited resources to review; sites are chosen
to demonstrate different features, etc.)
- Sites are only included in Gallery which meet the following criteria:
- have been initially reviewed by two teams, meeting
WAI's description of review team, and whose names and/or organizations remain
confidential
- meet at least a WCAG 1.0 Level AA according to the "Evaluating Web
Sites" conformance assessment method, one layer deep under the home page
of the site [?discuss?]
- have an established agreement with W3C/WAI to notify W3C/WAI if there
are any design changes during the time the site is posted in the Gallery
- have installed an icon or code on their site which facilitates automatic
monitoring
- can be monitored on a continual basis by W3C/WAI for changes in accessibility
status
- can be comprehensively re-evaluated by a review team on a monthly?
basis, for a period of no longer than (6 months maximum stay in gallery?)
- Sites which are nominated but not selected
- their names are not revealed
- Sites which have been previously included in the Gallery
- are no longer listed, even historically, once removed [? discuss]
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