Silver Conformance Subgroup -- 04 Feb 2020

new name for Silver

<LuisG> Jeanne: Very exciting, because it looks like we have a name for Silver

<LuisG> .. It was proposed to AGWG and accepted...prefaced with "there is no perfect solution that everyone loved"

<LuisG> .. there were three proposals brought: Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 3.0, Web Community Accessibility Guidelines 3.0, W3C Accessibility Guidelines 3.0

<LuisG> .. there was a big push to keep the WCAG acronym

<LuisG> .. the "3" in "W3C" is silent

<LuisG> janina: some folks suggested it might be referred to as Web Consortium Accessibility Guidelines

<LuisG> jeanne: and then we have the "Web" back in there

Challenges update

<LuisG> Peter_Korn: we have been working on addressing the comments and issues that were filed against the conformance challenges doc, we should be publishing an internal working draft in the next day or so

<LuisG> .. moving that to editors draft and then see if we can do another survey for publishing

<LuisG> janina: can we talk about the appendix?

<KimD> Can we put in a link to the doc?

<LuisG> peter_korn: in doing this work, we addressed multiple comments by recognizing that we should take all the weight and mass out of the challenges and move them to appendices. challenges 1-4 are fairly short and then direct to the appendix

<LuisG> .. all of the SC analysis is in an appendix

<LuisG> .. and the discussion that was very thin with one example of applying page level conformance in the non-web ICT world got a very large amount of content...got some older ICT work and did some mappings to WCAG to ICT to be able to apply it to a non-web content to see what that would mean to a potential conformance challenge and put that in an appendix

<LuisG> .. haven't yet done something similar with the "Silver" research content

<LuisG> .. as in, having a one or two paragraph high level and putting that into a third appendix

<LuisG> .. but it might make sense from a parallelization structure point of view

<LuisG> .. but it'd be the smallest, so it wouldn't be as important

<LuisG> jeanne: is there a link, can we see it?

<LuisG> peter_korn: I'm hoping to disentangle a lot of editing information and get it into Github and then it'll be ready for folks to see

<LuisG> jeanne: maybe we should put all the Silver problem statements in the appendix instead of just the conformance challenges

<LuisG> peter_korn: it's still very much focused on conformance only, but a lot of the challenges arise from how difficult it is to automate or scale the need for human involvement

<LuisG> .. and several potential ways of addressing these challenges have come up and those particular approaches for dealing with these challenges vary by success criteria

<LuisG> .. that's why all those SCs are still there, but now in an appendix

<jeanne> acl pet

<Peter_Korn> qck Peter

new name for Silver

Conformance comments from AGWG

<LuisG> jeanne: we got a lot more comments in the meeting today, I'll see if I can share my notes from the meeting

<LuisG> .. maybe others that were in attendance will speak up as well

<jeanne> https://www.w3.org/2002/09/wbs/94845/Silver-ED-21-01-2020/results#xq3

<LuisG> we'll go down to question 13, scoring and conformance

<LuisG> jeanne: what came up the most is that people felt it was unfinished and too vague and they didn't understand it

<LuisG> .. Alastair suggested we do an example of a mock website. maybe we could do the BAD demo and score it using the success criteria that we have done

<LuisG> .. and maybe put that in the Explainer document, not the main document

<LuisG> .. I thought it was an interesting idea, but let's see if that kind of example would resolve some of these comments

<jeanne> https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1Akd11SpyNqIHT6SirwZrGYkMzJbIXZNQ4BYQ8v6onmA/edit#gid=0

<LuisG> .. only the first seven are in; now we're up to 14

<LuisG> .. let's at least start through the first seven and we can circle back around if we have time

<KimD> scribe: KimD

Jeanne: looking at results for question 13

<jeanne> Scoring is still very uncertain and unknown, so it is very hard to understand what to expect. I think rating accessibility on a scale is slightly counter productive given the wide variety of disabilities, however it will help people understand their position with more clarity. I feel that scoring will result in businesses reaching minimum score standards and staying there (whatever this

<jeanne> score may be) and looking for the fastest way to hit the minimum score standards, rather than striving for a better product.

Jeanne: unclear how to address

Peter: I think scoring should be one tool that can be applied to validate whether an assertion is true
... sample and score should show that. Any mechanism that doesn't take into account what real people will encounter will fall short

Jeanne: Have we fallen short?

Peter: examples would go a long way to clarify and give something more substantial to assess

Jeanne: agree, and example would be helpful
... would love some help with doing that
... we are in col. AN in the spreadsheet

<jeanne> How scoring should work is too vague. Points & Levels explains better but relation is not clear to this chapter

Next comment:

Jeanne: agree, it needs to be smoothed out some. We've been working over time, so it could be smoother

Next one:

<jeanne> I am concerned with the following phrase "Allowing the organization (this includes company, business, non-profit, government) to prioritize what it important for their product for accessibility assessment."

<jeanne> While their input is a valuable piece -- it cannot be the sole decision in making a determination. We need to find a compromise that takes into account users, important tasks, steps in a process, legally mandated pages, etc.

<jeanne> I'm not sure why clear language would be tested on more pages than other manual issues if the goal is to make sure all disabilities are treated equally.

<janina> scribe: janina

js: Starting with the first one ...
... Is it stumbling on understanding "what is important?"
... Proposing "priortizing workflows of their product"

<jeanne> Allowing the organization (this includes company, business, non-profit, government) to prioritize what workflows are important for their product for accessibility assessment

<KimD_> scribe: KimD

<KimD_> Jeanne: our point was that the company creating the product is the one that knows what's important about it

<KimD_> ... in the sampling we talk about other things (header, footer, etc) and pages to get to that workflow are important

<KimD_> ... we could say more info is in the sampling section

<KimD_> Jeanne: what about the 3rd paragraph of that response?

<KimD_> Janina: maybe we acknowledge that

<KimD_> 3rd paragraph: I'm not sure why clear language would be tested on more pages than other manual issues if the goal is to make sure all disabilities are treated equally.

<KimD_> Next comment: I'm glad to see the emphasis on scoring and conformance in Silver. I'm assuming the text here is just a placeholder and will be reviewed in due course.

<KimD_> Next comment: "Conformance is a complex topic with many parts that work together. Scoring is more easily understood. .... " I would be surprised if percentage based conformance model will be easier to understand than the pass/fail model we have now. We may still may want to go with percentages for other reasons but I don't think making it "easier" to evaluate will be one of those reasons.

<KimD_> If we go with a percentage model then the justification should be something like. "there are usually artefact errors which don't affect the use of the page, but prevent from the making of a conformance claim under 2.x, therefore the ext major version will introduce scoring .... " or something like that.

<KimD_> Jeanne: maybe we need to update the introductory section

<KimD_> Janina: more comprehensively applicable is the goal

<KimD_> Jeanne: the intro is old

<Peter_Korn> WCAG 2.x defines Conformance “for full Web page(s) only” and notes that it “cannot be achieved if part of a Web page is excluded”. WCAG 2.x goes on to set forth what is allowed in any optional “Conformance Claims”, starting with text that states: “Conformance is defined only for Web pages. However, a conformance claim may be made to cover one page, a series of pages, or multiple related Web pages.” While WCAG 2.x doesn’t def[CUT]

<KimD_> (IRC cuts Peter's pasted text)

<KimD_> Peter: basic idea is to separate out page conformance from website conformance

<KimD_> ... we say conformance from 2.x is page conformance, silver is website conformance, and here's how...

<KimD_> Janina: and also introducing organizationally scoped conformance

<KimD_> Jeanne: Next steps: Peter and Janina working on things, Jeanne working on example

<KimD_> ... maybe look at this Friday

<KimD_> ... testing on a real website will give us some idea of what this would be like to use

<KimD_> Peter: trouble with using a real website is you are potentially pulling someone in regarding their accessibility

<KimD_> ... perhaps better to create a sample site

<KimD_> Jeanne: we could use the before and after demo from WAI

<KimD_> ... it's a newsletter that has errors, then the 'after' has the errors cleaned up

<KimD_> ... so the good and bad is already known

<KimD_> ... not sure if we need an example (fake) website

<KimD_> Peter: example of alt text that is missing

<KimD_> Jeanne: we have to be realistic about making a fake website as our example, given our timeline

- DRAFT -

Silver Conformance Subgroup

04 Feb 2020

Attendees

Contents

new name for Silver

Challenges update

new name for Silver

Conformance comments from AGWG

Summary of Action Items

Summary of Resolutions

Scribe.perl diagnostic output