Talk:Substantial Conformance/Example Scenarios

From Silver

Open Issues for Discussion

Key Terminology and Concepts

  • [Closed] Mary Jo: The definitions aren't clear to me. Especially "Content Owner" being the "commissioner of the content" as nowhere else to we use that phrase. IMO, The content provider is the one who hosts the content. It may be content they are also the creator of, or it may be just a hosting platform for content creators to publish their content. A "Content owner" is the person who owns rights to the content. The three may be the same person or entity, but the content owner, when there is copyright or trademark information, is the owner of that. It also may be good to provide a real-life example for each.
  • [Closed] Mary Jo: Splitting hairs between Conformance and Compliance is really not that important to me, especially since many people use them interchangeably. In the dictionary, conforming is part of the definition of compliance. The context of what you're talking about lets you know if it's meeting the requirements in a standard vs. meeting the requirements of a policy or law.

Situation 1

  • [Fixed] Mary Jo: Example 1.1 has a typo in 2nd sentence: "script on each script" should be "script on each scroll".
  • [Closed] Mary Jo: Either a tweak to Example 1.2 or a new example: This training example could be enhanced to say a company has a live meeting where they use automated captioning and record the session. The meeting is initially published using the automated captioning. They know that the automated captions don't identify the speaker and sometimes get the text and punctuation incorrect - especially when technical jargon is involved. They initially publish it to make it available quickly and then work to have the captions corrected and republish the training. They initially identify the recorded training as having automated captions with the note that they will be corrected and the recording republished when it is available. ....and so on...
  • [Closed] Mary Jo: Another real-world example could be that a company acquires a new company whose online website and web-based applications are not accessible. There would have to be a step-wise plan and incremental actions to get the website and applications to be fully accessible. It could even be that the technologies/platforms used by the acquired company aren't accessible so a migration to a newer, more accessible platform is needed to start the accessibility journey.
  • [Closed] Mary Jo: Same Section, In the "How technical standards can contribute to addressing this situation" I'm not exactly sure what this phrase means, "and ensuring that inaccessible content does not impede on the accessibility of other content." None of the examples 1.1-1.3 have any situations that I could think of that could impede. Unless the platform for publishing doesn't provide the capability to mark what is accessible vs. inaccessible, what type of accessibility you have (automated captions, captions, audio descriptions) - that would be what would impede the ability to show progress.
    • Tweaked Example 1.3 to call out automatically playing videos as an example of inaccessible content that can impede on the accessibility of other content. (discussed during Teleconference Meeting on 3 February 2022)
  • [Done] Mary Jo: Further comment [on example 1.3]. IMO, I don't think this example needs to be limited to an educational MOOC (as we have other education examples already). Simply having a company acquiring another that previously didn't consider accessibility in their web presence or products/services they offer is sufficient. I don't want to give the impression that only media can fall into the situation where not everything can be made accessible at once.
    • Tweaked Example 1.3 from initially a MOOC to a generic website/app

Situation 2

  • [Closed] Mary Jo: This situation could also apply to legacy applications and support documents for those applications that are still in use (that may have been developed using an older accessibility standard). These may be getting phased out with newer technology to be phased in that will meet more current standards. Instead of updating the legacy application, reasonable accommodations are made for persons with disabilities upon request until the application that conforms to the latest standards is available.
  • [Done] Janina: I remain concerned that there may still be repositories where providing extended descriptions for all content may not just need more time, but may be impractical to expect under current technology. I'd like to explore some way to define that appropriately.

Situation 5

  • [Open] Shadi's summary of Janina's comments: Open discussion about the increasing complexity of websites and inter-dependencies with libraries, advertisements, etc.

Situation 6

  • [Done] Janina: I'd rather say "will" than "can" have bugs. I don't believe we reasonably expect fully bugfree content or software. We still need to find reliable data on what's considered acceptable in the industry, and what are acceptable times to remediation of critical bugs. Can we get some stats behind this important scenario? I'm uncomfortable putting it forward until we have reliable data to include.

Situation 7

  • [Closed] Mary Jo: Wondering if there should also be an example for product demos. It's different from a Beta - isn't really fully functioning, and is created using tools to provide basically a canvas with various "active points" to display information and walk the user through the software features. A lot (all) of the demo-creation authoring tools do not have accessibility features built-in. The content provider isn't necessarily experimenting in this case.

Situation 8

  • [Done] Janina: APA has a W3C Note nearing completion on Scenario 8 written from the point of view of how to approach holding accessible realtime calls. I would suggest we might want to think about what remediations might be available for tightening synchronization when a recorded real time session is posted--that would only benefit everyone.

Situation 9

  • [Done] Janina: I would suggest lack of AT support should factor in. This is my interlinear example, but there are others.

Overall Comments

  • [Closed] Gregg: "People with disabilities are people first - there is nothing relevant to people that is not relevant to people with disabilities".
    • What about, say, a movie about disability (such as "Crip Camp") that is quite relevant to members of the disability movement and to educating people on disability but that may be overall less popular compared to other movies? Or a MOOC course on universal design, on diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI), and other such topics that may be particularly relevant to disability and accessibility but may be less popular compared to other courses?
    • Discussed during Teleconference Meeting on 27 January 2022, and added bullet on prioritizing content in a backlog to be made accessible in "How accompanying guidance can contribute to addressing this situation".
  • [Open] Jeanne: "I don't want to use academic examples because equal access to learning is protected under many national laws and would be a big distraction from the principles we are trying to put forward."
    • This may be referring to examples from education in the public and private sector (eg. universities and MOOC providers, which may be public or private organizations). This also seems to be specific to certain laws and structures in the United States, which may be beyond the scope of this document and what it is trying to accomplish (applicable to a broad set of policies on web accessibility).
  • [Done] Wilco (example provided during Teleconference Meeting on 27 January 2022): Not all accessibility requirements might be applicable -- for example, recording a webinar and providing the recordings to an audience with known accessibility needs.
    • [For review] Drafted new "Situation 10: Not all accessibility requirements are always applicable" to address this and other examples.
  • [Done] Janina: Jeanne and I both feel we need one more section where we develop scenarios covering the majority of businesses who arguably have too few employees to even cover IT professionally, let alone a11y. I found this Forbes article which references the U.S. Census Bureau: https://www.forbes.com/sites/rhettbuttle/2021/10/13/vaccine-requirements-5-things-small-business-owners-should-consider/ The key data point here is: "...that 98.1% of U.S. businesses employ fewer than 100 people and those with less than than 10 employees account for 78.4%." Suggestion is that we need to do something for such a large swath of web presence.
    • Specific suggestions for group discussion (discussed during Teleconference Meeting on 10 February 2022):
      • Added new "Situation 11" on small businesses, with considerations for the concept of reasonability (aka undue burden)
      • Added an example to situation 5, where a small business is dependent on the underlying website generator/authoring tool
      • Following that example, added in situation 5 guidance on selecting appropriate authoring tools, getting support, and such
      • Added in situation 5 policy considerations for tool and service providers, such as for content management systems (CMS)


Censorship, Civil Rights, and Related

[Open] this section touches on some of the subjects relating to time, availability, and ability in terms of making content conform to accessibility mandates, and importantly intersects with content type and content relevance. This section adds concerns previously unacknowledged including but not limited to censorship, privacy, fingerprinting, and related civil liberty and civil rights concerns.

These documents (WCAG) have demonstrated the ability to influence or even become codified into law in some nations. Edicts of "Harm None" and avoidance of unintended consequences are therefore of a high priority.


It is an utterly chilling thought to consider that failing to adhere to any given accessibility mandate could (and certainly would) be used to effect censorship.


This is not an easy bright line to draw. But let's examine some cases.

  • Janus's home is near a newly erupting battle line. She videos the nearby explosions on her phone. When the shooting descends directly onto her street, she stops filming and huddles in her basement, uploading the raw footage before shutting off the phone to avoid detection.
Q What degree of accessibility must the raw footage have when uploaded?
A NONE. Raw documentary media has no accessibility requirements, especially in cases like this. Importantly, raw media types have the highest priority of "non-intervention" and preservation without transcoding. Raw media offers the best opportunity to enhance to determine a license plate, or identifying face, etc.
  • Well meaning judges in nation "UX" rule on a case, creating case law that sites that fail to conform to the letter of "guideline" can be shut down for non compliance. Fred has a site promoting alternative lifestyles, allows anonymous posting, and is occasionally critical of the government in related matters. Fred makes a good effort to be accessible, however, technology prevents absolute letter of the law conformance. While the UX govt is restricted from "content based censorship" they use the case law to take down the site via a claim of "non compliance". Andrew Somers (talk) 03:05, 16 February 2022 (UTC)


Text and non text use cases

[Open] As part of the research for APCA, there are a number of use-case variations, some of which include content relevance. This is more granular than being discussed here, and perhaps this is not the right place to codify these, but it is nevertheless useful to discuss.

APCA Use Cases

For text, there are gradations of content relevance, and not all text content has the same precedence of value. In particular, readability, and critical reading metrics, is a range, and it is wrong to assign all text the same value, and it is wrong to force all text to the same contrast specification.

For instance, body text has the highest contrast needs. But there are cases of "spot" readable text, like a copyright, where not only does it have a lower contrast "need," attempting to force it to the same level as body text has the harmful result of added design clutter and distraction. Andrew Somers (talk) 03:05, 16 February 2022 (UTC)

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