Research Projects

The W3C WCAG Working Group’s Silver Task Force is seeking partners to assist with the research and analysis activities included in the Silver Design Plan. There will be a variety of levels of time commitments, depending on your interest. There is currently no funding available (that we know of) for this research.

The research studies will vary in objective, nature, and time required. We anticipate that some studies could potentially be used as the basis for undergraduate or graduate student projects, or for side projects that researchers can take on.

Our partnership would bring the following benefits to you and your students:

Directions for small-to-large research projects that can be added to the curriculum
Projects that have real-world applicability and impact
Potential for publication of new perspectives and insights

Beginning in January 2017 we will be designing research studies, and we will perform research and analyze research results throughout 2017 (see the Timeline for a high-level schedule of activities).

We could really use your help in designing the research studies. We want to make sure the studies are valid, and are optimally designed to answer the right research questions. We would also welcome your involvement in carrying out the research and analyzing the results.

High Priority Research Questions

Supporting people with disabilities

How well does the current content of W3C Accessibility Guidelines meet the accessibility needs of people with disabilities?
What are the needs of people with disabilities who are under-served from a standards perspective?

Supporting stakeholders

How usable are W3C Accessibility Guidelines to different stakeholder groups?
- How well does the current structure of W3C Accessibility Guidelines serve different stakeholder groups?
- How well does the current structure of W3C Accessibility Guidelines support learning and remembering key principles of web accessibility?
How well does the current conformance model for W3C Accessibility Guidelines serve accessibility for people with disabilities short-term and long-term?
How well do W3C Accessibility Guidelines support the creation of tools for evaluating accessibility?
How flexible are the current web accessibility standards in supporting emerging consumer technology trends?

When organizations choose to produce adaptations of WCAG

What aspects of WCAG do people drop?
What aspects of WCAG are most important and why?
What aspects of WCAG do people think are missing?
What do people change about WCAG?
What things are reworded for clarity?

Understanding the guideline development process

How have guideline development initiatives outside the field of accessibility engaged and solicited feedback from all relevant stakeholders? What methods have been particularly effective or ineffective?
For guideline development initiatives, what have been the key drivers of the timeline (whether lag or potential speed efficiencies)?
What are the factors that determine effective (i.e. widespread) adoption of and compliance with a new set of guidelines?

What's needed?

Given what we know about the current state, how might we create more effective accessibility guidelines?

Where do we set the boundaries of what to cover in accessibility guidelines? (ex: things managed by platforms, assistive tech, etc.)
What platforms should we include in the accessibility guidelines?
What should be the scope of accessibility guidelines? (Web content, native, platforms, hardware, where do you stop?)
How might we make accessibility guidelines easier to use by different stakeholder groups?
How might we make accessibility guidelines more maintainable?
- How might W3C Accessibility Guidelines make the process of keeping accessibility guidelines current achievable and timely?
How might we make accessibility guidelines address all types of disabilities?
How might we make conforming with guidelines more straightforward?
How might me make accessibility guidelines that provide needed guidance for different roles & industries (e.g. developers, designers, policy makers, tool developers, education, platform developers)?
How might we make adoption of accessibility guidelines more straightforward (minimize disruption to process and practice and culture)?

Proposed Research Questions

We started this list of questions following TF brainstorming activities. Additional questions have been contributed by researchers.

Current State

The following questions relate to the current state—the effectiveness of W3C Accessibility Guidelines and supporting resources in their current form (including WCAG, UAAG and ATAG) in meeting their intended goals.

Supporting people with disabilities

HIGH PRIORITY: How well does the current content of W3C Accessibility Guidelines meet the accessibility needs of people with disabilities?
HIGH PRIORITY: What are the needs of people with disabilities who are under-served from a standards perspective?

Supporting stakeholders

HIGH PRIORITY: How usable are W3C Accessibility Guidelines to different stakeholder groups?
- How well does the current structure of W3C Accessibility Guidelines serve different stakeholder groups?
- How well does the current structure of W3C Accessibility Guidelines support learning and remembering key principles of web accessibility?
How well do W3C Accessibility Guidelines reference assistive technologies in the structure of the guidelines?
HIGH PRIORITY: How well does the current conformance model for W3C Accessibility Guidelines serve accessibility for people with disabilities short-term and long-term?
How maintainable are W3C Accessibility Guidelines in their current form?
How well do W3C Accessibility Guidelines support selection of tools for evaluating accessibility?
HIGH PRIORITY: How well do W3C Accessibility Guidelines support the creation of tools for evaluating accessibility?
How well do W3C Accessibility Guidelines help platform vendors prioritize features that would help people with disabilities?
How well do W3C Accessibility Guidelines communicate the benefits of creating web content and applications with accessibility in mind?
How well do W3C Accessibility Guidelines communicate that accessibility supports business goals by expanding customer reach/growing revenue?
What are the main reasons why accessibility is not seen as on the critical path for product success?
What could W3C do to communicate the importance of accessibility to the business community?
HIGH PRIORITY: How flexible are the current web accessibility standards in supporting emerging consumer technology trends?
How well do W3C Accessibility Guidelines support recreational activities, such as games? What additional requirements/complications are involved?
How do W3C Accessibility Guidelines influence attitudes and biases related to accessibility and people with disabilities?
How well do W3C Accessibility Guidelines support online learning and learning management systems?

HIGH PRIORITY: When organizations choose to produce adaptations of WCAG

What aspects of WCAG do people drop?
What aspects of WCAG are most important and why?
What aspects of WCAG do people think are missing?
What do people change about WCAG?
What things are reworded for clarity?

HIGH PRIORITY: Understanding the guideline development process

How have guideline development initiatives outside the field of accessibility engaged and solicited feedback from all relevant stakeholders? What methods have been particularly effective or ineffective?
For guideline development initiatives, what have been the key drivers of the timeline (whether lag or potential speed efficiencies)?
What are the factors that determine effective (i.e. widespread) adoption of and compliance with a new set of guidelines?
What can we learn from the WCAG 2.1 process and rollout?

What's needed?

Given what we know about the current state, how might we create more effective accessibility guidelines?

HIGH PRIORITY: Where do we set the boundaries of what to cover in accessibility guidelines? (ex: things managed by platforms, assistive tech, etc.)
HIGH PRIORITY: What platforms should we include in the accessibility guidelines?
HIGH PRIORITY: What should be the scope of accessibility guidelines? (Web content, native, platforms, hardware, where do you stop?)
HIGH PRIORITY: How might we make accessibility guidelines easier to use by different stakeholder groups?
How might W3C Accessibility Guidelines support stakeholders become more knowledgeable about their relationship to and responsibility for accessibility?
How might W3C Accessibility Guidelines make accessibility decision-making process more clear (straightforward)?
HIGH PRIORITY: How might we make accessibility guidelines more maintainable?
- How might W3C Accessibility Guidelines make the process of keeping accessibility guidelines current achievable and timely?
HIGH PRIORITY: How might we make accessibility guidelines address all types of disabilities?
HIGH PRIORITY: How might we make conforming with guidelines more straightforward?
HIGH PRIORITY: How might me make accessibility guidelines that provide needed guidance for different roles & industries (e.g. developers, designers, policy makers, tool developers, education, platform developers)?
HIGH PRIORITY: How might we make adoption of accessibility guidelines more straightforward (minimize disruption to process and practice and culture)?
How might we make accessibility guidelines that facilitate a real change in how society manages digital access for people with disabilities?
How might we make accessibility guidelines that clearly support and improve product quality? For example, double checking accessibility when new content is added to a learning management system?
How might we make accessibility guidelines that support accessibility best practices?
How might we make accessibility guidelines that support online learning?

User Research

Surveys

Public surveys will be heavily used in the Discovery phase. Validity of the surveys is crucial. The purpose of the survey is to gather a breadth of perspective and not the popularity of perspective. For example, the deaf-blind community is very small, but their need for digital access to information is particularly acute.

There will be multiple surveys addressed to specific groups -- a survey for developers will be different from a survey addressed toward people with disabilities. Translation of surveys into other languages will also be important. We expect to get support from accessibility professionals in other countries for translation.

We see this as an excellent opportunity for a number of small group projects for a class with an emphasis on statistical validity of surveys. We will be able to help with contacts, mailing lists, and translations.

People with disabilities
Developers
QA professionals and tool developers
Designers
Policymakers

Languages we can probably support:

French
German
Dutch
Japanese
Korean
Chinese

Questions we want answered:

TBD

Stakeholder interviews

Stakeholder interviews are valuable for gathering anecdotal data from people with valuable perspective, but who do not have the ability or inclination to participate in Silver in a more active way. These interviews will be phone interviews with followup emails as the project progresses. These key stakeholder advisors will be a resource throughout the development of Silver.

This part will primarily be done by the Silver Task Force, but there could be opportunities for students who would like to assist with the interviews with the opportunity to write their own paper on their findings.

Self reporting

Self reporting in this option will involve asking people who use WCAG regularly to keep a diary of their use of WCAG over a (for example) two week period with some structured questions, but mostly will be used to gather insight and opinion on their use of WCAG. These diaries will be anonymously assembled into a report of insights. This information will be used primarily to form insights on how to make the structure of Silver more useful to the regular users.

This is an excellent opportunity for a major project

Background Research

Literature/article review

Systematic examination of articles about WCAG can glean much about the technical, cultural, and practical aspects of WCAG. Done through literature/article reviews and analysis

lots of opportunities for small projects to review existing WCAG information and perspectives. The interpretation will be interesting and informative.
The challenge will be identifying literature outside the usual circle of accessibility professionals
identify any meaningful analysis of what people have done such as effectiveness, usability, etc. Peoples opinions of the structure, clarity of language, organization, etc.

Secondary research from other organizations

There are other working groups within W3C and other standards organizations who have developed techniques for faster progress, or have cautionary tales of techniques that did not work. The Silver subgroup team will approach other organizations for advice and techniques for greater flexibility in standards development and maintenance. The results of this inquiry will be written into a public report where some data may be anonymized as requested by the advising organization.

Other organizations have done things faster
Other organizations have cautionary tales

WCAG analysis

Systematic examination of WCAG and its component parts, including the guidelines and the process of creating/maintaining WCAG, in order to learn about the technical, cultural, and practical aspects of WCAG through inventory and analysis.

Questions we want answered
Scope of the analysis
- Content
  - Guidelines
  - Structure
- WCAG Process
  - Creation
  - Maintenance
  - Communication

Analysis of WCAG adaptations

Much can be learned from all the organizations that use WCAG, but find it doesn't meet their needs, and have made their own adaptation of WCAG. Most of that material is public and can be studied with an eye toward common themes of what is needed. The results will be documented in a way that feeds into the Analysis phase, probably by creating (at least) one persona that is a person writing Silver standards. This persona would still relevant for updating and maintaining Silver.

What aspects of WCAG do people drop?
what aspects of WCAG do people think are missing?
What do people change about WCAG?
What things are reworded for clarity?
Ways to deliver the WCAG information more efficiently

Expectations

The Silver Task Force wants to partner with researchers to perform user research and/or background research on WCAG 2.0 and then help the Silver Task Force analyze the data. This analysis will be used to write the Requirements document for Silver and to help with decision-making while writing the Silver document itself. The Silver Task Force is on a strict timeline to write the Requirements document for Silver.

In case the researcher's analysis of the research data is delayed, the Silver Task Force will use the available research data to perform their own analysis before the researcher publishes their own paper. The Silver Task Force reserves the right to perform their own analysis and interpretation of the results as soon as the researcher completes the data collection phase.
The research data remains the intellectual property of the researcher for your own analysis, interpretation, and publication. The researcher is only required to give attribution to W3C for work that is derivative of the specification, e.g. a new variation of the specification, or a training program based on the specification.
Any results of the research that are included in the standard (e.g. a research conclusion that is directly quoted in the resulting standard) drafted by the Silver Task Force are subject to the W3C Community Contributor License Agreement (CLA). CLA provides people with a place to do pre-standards work at W3C. W3C policies ensure that any standards produced by W3C can be implemented on a Royalty-Free (RF) basis. Therefore, when people collaborate on a standard at W3C, they contribute intellectual property (IP). An excerpt of the agreement pertaining to copyright:

2. Copyrights.
2.1. Copyright Grant. I grant to you a perpetual (for the duration of the applicable copyright), worldwide, non-exclusive, no-charge, royalty-free, copyright license, without any obligation for accounting to me, to reproduce, prepare derivative works of, publicly display, publicly perform, sublicense, distribute, and implement any Contribution to the full extent of my copyright interest in the Contribution.
2.2. Attribution. As a condition of the copyright grant, you must include an attribution to the Specification in any derivative work you make based on the Specification. That attribution must include, at minimum, the Specification name and version number.

Some explanations: "I" is the W3C and "you" is the researcher. "Derivative works" usually applies to people who are writing standards or creating training programs based on W3C specifications. That should not apply to this situation.

Policies for use of Silver Stakeholder Contact Information

In draft form Policies for use of Contact Information on W3C Silver project

Timeline

Start	End	Task
12-Dec-16	31-Dec-16	Create Stakeholder Map
13-Dec-16	20-Dec-16	Publish Draft of Stakeholder Map
16-Dec-16	20-Dec-16	Assign TF partners and reach out to faculty
1-Jan-17	30-Apr-17	Design Research Survey
1-Jan-17	30-Apr-17	Design and conduct Interviews and Self Reporting
3-Jan-17		Start Literature Review, Secondary Research from Other Organizations
4-Jan-17		Start WCAG Analysis and WCAG adaptation review
1-Feb-17	30-Oct-17	Perform Research
1-Apr-17	31-Dec-17	Interpret and report on research findings