Faster Progress Option

Introduction

The Silver Design goals were communicated to the WCAG WG in the Silver Design Survey. The Faster Progress Option for Designing Silver puts it's focus on involving more people with disabilities, broad communication to build consensus in advance, and fundraising to pay for expediting work and travel for people without corporate sponsorship. A hazard of faster progress is that minority voices can be shut out, which is why there is an emphasis on involving more people with disabilities with financial support for travel.

This option for the design of Silver is most oriented toward faster progress to design Silver and write the requirements. Some methods may be more time-consuming to accomplish, but will be oriented toward saving time further along the process. This process specifically addresses the goals:

• Perspectives
• Broad Communication
• Evidence & data
• Define & Engage
• Milestones

The other goals are still important and included, but the emphasis for this process option is on:

• Gathering data from a broad range of stakeholders in the early phase of the project, so the process serves a broader range of needs, and the process has more protection from the dominance of special interests.
• Engaging broad public support from the beginning, including support for resources to achieve faster progress
• Using evidence & data gathering in the early phases of the project to help drive decision-making later in the Production phase of the project.
• Reaching beyond the usual pool of WCAG supporters to engage new stakeholders to support the effort, so that there will be more resources (human & financial) available to expedite the production of Silver. WAI needs the perspectives and input of people with disabilities, who often do not have the financial resources to participate at the level they would like; good research costs money to be accomplished in an expedited manner. W3C workshop and/or a full-time editor or project manager who is independent of financial interests costs money. This process option will require fundraising.
• This option will set milestones publicly, and will follow best practices for project management. (The devil is in the details.)

Broad communication is a two-edged sword -- broad support will ultimately result in a better spec with faster adoption, but too many opinions slows written proposals to a crawl. This option will look at standards development practices that may be new to the WCAG WG.

People resources: This option will look beyond the WCAG WG and bring in new partipants to help with the work. Since the WCAG WG is primarily focused on WCAG 2.1 and this option will be running concurrently, new participation will be needed to keep the project moving forward.

Phase 1: Discovery

Understand needs, identify opportunities

Objectives

• Learn from people who use WCAG currently as a design spec or technical standard; who measure and document compliance; to support laws and regulations; and to teach accessibility.
• Learn from people impacted directly or indirectly by WCAG currently such as. web visitors, application users, content creators, application creators; people who implement or support IT, and people who create adaptations of WCAG.

User Research

The methods in this section will emphasize gathering data and insights into user needs of the people who use WCAG, and the people impacted by WCAG.

Stakeholder Map

A broad group of stakeholders will be defined for this process. This list will be dynamic, being updated as new interests are uncovered. These stakeholders will include aggressive outreach to more obscure disability organizations (at least, "obscure" from a W3C perspective), enrolling them in varying levels of participation in the process of developing Silver.

Survey

Public surveys will be heavily used in the Discovery phase. We will engage professional support in creating valid surveys. 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.

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.

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 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.

Research

The section includes other forms of research in addition user needs research.

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 faster quality standards development. The results of this inquiry will be written into a public report where some data may be anonymized as requested by the advising organization. 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.

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.

Communication

One result of the Research phase (in Faster Progress Option) will be to create a list of topics for the W3C Workshop. For faster progress, the Personas and User Stories will be written during the 8 weeks that the W3C requires for advance notice of W3C Workshops.

Phase 2: Interpretation

Transform data into insights

Objectives

• Synthesize data from discovery phase into actionable insights, considerations, recommendations, etc.
• Communicate insights
  • Via reports, blog articles, presentations

Synthesis

Research needs to be assembled in a logical way to assist the formation of useful conclusions that can be used throughout the Silver development process.

Personas

Personas are a widely accepted method of usability research where the user needs data from a multitude of sources are anonymously aggregated into a composite description of a person who uses WCAG. Personas will be useful throughout Silver development, as a way to go back and check that the project is on track and that user needs are being addressed and met. Personas may take time to develop, but they will speed decision-making further in the process of Silver development. Persona development will focus on the aspects of the persona that are relevant to Silver. More attention will be paid in developing the user story of that persona (see next section) than in fleshing out details of the person that are not relevant to Silver. Create (at least) one persona that is a person writing Silver standards based on the secondary research. This persona would still relevant for updating and maintaining Silver.

User Stories

User stories are short stories of the persona in action using Silver. These will be used for review purposes throughout Silver development as a quick technique for making sure that the user needs are being addressed and keeping the project focused on the people we are serving.

Analysis

The subgroup will use design research techniques (inventory and grouping) in a face to face meeting (F2F) to identify:

• key themes and insights
• recommendation of the themes and insights to pursue
• related observations
• the result of this F2F will be a report detailed in the next section

Communication

The result of the F2F meeting of the subgroup will be :

• Report of conclusions of the research
• Key themes, insights, and any diagrams useful to illustrate the insights
• List of topics for paper submission for a W3C workshop

Phase 3: Ideation

Build insights and opportunities into possibilities

Objectives

• Identify viable options for structure and substance of Silver
• Choose a subset of viable options to use for experimentation

Concept Generation

The list of topics generated in the Interpretation phase will be disseminated broadly in a call for papers on the structure of Silver for a W3C Workshop. In order for people to attend the workshop, they must submit a paper which must be accepted by the Silver subgroup. There will be financial support for travel for those participants who are not supported by an employer. This helps to filter the participants to people who have considered thought and are willing to work more than those who simply have an opinion. All participants must read all the papers before the workshop starts and be prepared for thoughtful, productive facilitated discussion.

Choosing

After the discussion portion (first morning), the large group will divide into smaller groups that will each work on developing a prototype which will be brought back to the broader group for discussion, refinement and recommendations.

Phase 4: Experimentation

Prototyping

In the same W3C workshop as Phase 3, participants will form into small groups and create a prototype based on the papers and discussion in the Ideation phase and then present that prototype to the wider partipant group for discussion. If time, prototypes will be compared to the user stores generation in the Interpretation phase, otherwise that comparison will be completed after the workshop. The Workshop Report will include the prototypes and the pros and cons of each prototype. Prototypes will be public. The best prototypes (as agreed by the Workshop Participants or the Silver Subgroup) will be fleshed out more for user research (next section) and broad dissemination.

User Research

User Journeys

The prototypes developed in the W3C Workshop will be compared to the User Journeys developed in the Interpretation Phase (Phase 2). This should happen as part of the W3C workshop, so that discussion and refinement can happen as part of the Workshop. If that cannot be done at the Workshop, then members of the sub-group will walk the prototypes through the User Journeys and publish their findings for public discussion.

Desirability Testing

The prototypes will be publicly available for people (especially Stakeholders) to experiment and evaluate and comment. In addition, there will be a broadly advertised survey of the prototypes where respondents can compare (higher, lower) the different prototypes, vote and comment. As much as possible, the prototypes should be discussed at various accessibility meetups, conferences, and email lists. This is a point where all input is welcome, but it will only be logged in aggregate, and it does not follow W3C comment process, because this is still a "pre-Requirements" phase.

Refinement

If needed, a new prototype combining different aspects of the public discussion can be created, or a popular prototype can be fleshed out.

Choosing

At this point, it should be clear what the most desirable prototypes are. Based on the Objectives, the requirements of the User Journeys, and the data obtained during the Desireability Testing, the Silver Subgroup will assemble their recommendation to the WCAG WG with supporting data. This will take the form of a Silver Requirements document and the prototype(s) selected.

Phase 5: Production and Evolution

Resourcing

The final prototype and the recommendations of the W3C Workshop report will give a path forward for the resources needed for going into development of the Silver First Public Working Draft (FPWD). Some possibilities include:

• Asking W3C members to contribute an employee's fulltime effort as a W3C fellow dedicated to Silver
• Hiring a full-time editor, similar to what was done for HTML5
• Forming an official Silver Task Force (if that has not already been done)
• Scheduling a multi-day Task Force F2F meeting specifically for drafting the FPWD.
• Fellow/hiring a full-time project manager for Silver

Management

• W3C Re-Charter as needed
• Setting granular specific milestones (more granular than the W3C Charter)
• Setting decision-making policy that discourages extended discussion, but protects the voice of minorities -- especially PwDs.

Production

Developing Silver itself will follow the Requirements document. The work should be done in a smaller Task Force with regular reporting to the WCAG WG as a whole. Since Silver development will be concurrent with WCAG 2.x development, the main focus of WCAG WG (or AGWG, as it may be known by then) will be the management of the process rather than specific proposal development. Controversial issues should be referred to the AGWG as a whole.

Maintenance and Evolution

Maintenance of Silver will be a part of the prototype and requirements. As soon as the FPWD is complete, work should begin on the next revision with the items that are declared out of scope for the FPWD. This option of Silver will be lean, mean and nimble.  :)