21 Testability and Voting Machines

This is a great explanation of some of the issues surrounding a “testable” in any standard, particularly in reference to usability. Interesting this exact issue is becoming an issue for the new U.S. federal voting machine standards.

I recommend anyone interested in usability standards to review the latest draft of the standards , known as the Voluntary Voting System Guidelines (VVSG). Relevant comments should be sent to voting@nist.gov

posted at 08:22 pm on June 26, 2007 by Chris Backert

22 Waiting on Moses and those Commandments

I’ve voiced my frustration with WCAG in other venues. It’s academic and arcane and hasn’t fostered a movement towards accessible sites, leaving it still as nothing more than a hammer for lawyers or a Shining Torch of Truth for standardistas.

But I’m not sure if removing testability is the right idea. The problem is that common users need testability. Most sites for businesses and academic units aren’t created by design firms or standardistas; they’re created by people with basic knowledge and basic tools. The best way to get them to accessibility is to give them tools to build and validate, and the creators of those tools need guidelines reflecting what they should be testing for.

Is the problem here the mission? Maybe WCAG 2.0 is trying to do too much here. Maybe the problem here is that the working group is trying to write Leviticus when all they need is to deliver the Ten Commandments and let others meet to come up with the 637 laws that stem from them.

In non-religious terms, maybe WCAG 2.0 needs to be just the most basic guidelines, written to be as clear and unwordy as possible, with an eye to other working groups interpreting these guidelines into rules germane to specific uses. In other words, blow out 90% of the document, write some basic and general statements, and then punt it to others to try and figure out what that means for specific instances.

I’m not arguing for a market-based creation of standards. What I’m saying is that the WCAG works on not coveting their neighbor’s ass, not about whether that ass is kosher for Passover.

Unfortunately, I think it’s too late for that. We’re stuck with the muddle we’re in now, and it’s just going to continue what I consistently see at my level — the common web person blowing off accessibility because it’s not “easy” and lacks a simple validation methodology.

posted at 09:48 pm on June 26, 2007 by Dylan Wilbanks

23 technology-specific guidelines

In my view, technology-specific guidelines are better because of the relative ease of use. Yes, they expire with technology, but what is the alternative? So far, it seems to be either 1) inordinately long development time for technology-agnostic guidelines which require technology-specific examples for clarity, or 2) updated and/or new guidelines for the natural evolution in technologies.

If there’s a third way, I haven’t seen it yet, and I’m starting to think option 2 above is the more natural choice.

posted at 10:00 pm on June 26, 2007 by Pat Ramsey

24 Keeping the web accessible

The WCAG as an organisation is becoming increasingly unaccessible to the wider web community which, in itself, is an amusing paradox.

The core consideration in regards to WCAG, that prevents its relevance, is accessibility of the web to the authoring community, not just website users. Guidelines that prevent the average punter from publishing web content easily are counter-productive to the development of the internet as a whole. Which, is probably why the WCAG2.0 is never going to find endorsement by any legal authority.

The internet’s core area of accessibility is the disemmenation of content by individuals who have access to a device capable of FTP/HTTP. When guidelines are created which prevent this, then they will largely be ignored. Which, is what we have seen to date and we will continue to see in the future.

I definitely agree that the main issue at stake here is the lack of consultation with community groups who work directly with disabled people . It is from these groups that guidelines should be formed, on which, those of us with the technical skills to translate those needs into real coding approaches should then translate those guidelines into a formal working document. At the moment, I see far too many websites with a WCAG validation logo that don’t even come close to being accessible to large sections of the disabled community. Now, do you think this helps the WCAG’s credibity, or, hinder it?

posted at 11:27 pm on June 26, 2007 by David Thomson

25 it still fits on a business card

maybe WCAG 2.0 needs to be just the most basic guidelines, written to be as clear and unwordy as possible

Hmm. Like… this?

• 1.1 Provide text alternatives for any non-text content so that it can be changed into other forms people need such as large print, braille, speech, symbols or simpler language
• 1.2 Provide synchronized alternatives for multimedia
• 1.3 Create content that can be presented in different ways (for example spoken aloud, simpler layout, etc.) without losing information or structure
• 1.4 Make it easier for people with disabilities to see and hear content including separating foreground from background
• 2.1 Make all functionality available from a keyboard
• 2.2 Provide users with disabilities enough time to read and use content
• 2.3 Do not create content that is known to cause seizures
• 2.4 Provide ways to help users with disabilities navigate, find content and determine where they are
• 3.1 Make text content readable and understandable
• 3.2 Make Web pages appear and operate in predictable ways
• 3.3 Help users avoid and correct mistakes

• 4.1 Maximize compatibility with current and future user agents, including assistive technologies

If you don’t understand these in enough detail, there are checkpoints to spell it out. If you don’t understand those, there are techniques to define whether you’ve met them. And if you still don’t comprehend, the Working Group has even documented why each one is necessary.

It seems most of the criticism here is that WCAG 2 isn’t at the same time universally applicable, comprehensive, precise beyond a shadow of a doubt, and capable of being taught to developers over the course of an elevator ride. I know! Maybe a unicorn could deliver it with a free iPhone, too!

posted at 01:32 am on June 27, 2007 by Matt May

26 Give it a fair shot

I agree with Gian that interested designers and developers should submit comments about the current draft. One additional request should be made however, and that is to read the draft document first. I’ve put my “geez this document has taken forever” and “I don’t want to learn new standards” thoughts aside and given the draft as objective a read as possible and am pretty happy with the result. And if you read the document and have negative comments at least it won’t sound like you’re just writing because Gian suggested it.

I’d also like to add that efforts are being made to make the new Section 508 standards and WCAG 2.0 and the ISO accessibility standards harmonize with each other. Wouldn’t it be nice to have a single set of standards that you need to follow? Participation in the Section 508 process is open to the public, so if you have thoughts and want to participate join the mailing lists and calls. Find out more at http://www.teitac.org

posted at 04:53 am on June 27, 2007 by Andrew Kirkpatrick

27 So let's polish the rough edges

I must second Matt and Andrew’s comments. Much of the criticism of WCAG 2.0 is due to a few, relatively minor rough edges. Forget the W3C process and politics for a minute and read the document from an objective point of view and you’ll find it to be quite good. It’s far from perfect, but good. Suggestions that we toss out the baby with the bath water will result in no progress in accessibility.

If we want WCAG 2.0 to be adopted or adapted in broader realms, particularly in legal arenas where it will have the broadest impact, then some level of testability is vital. Does this make things more difficult? Absolutely. Is the 8 out of 10 thing absurd? Yep. Should WCAG 2.0 include some provisions for guidelines that are not absolutely testable? Yes, or they should drop the guidelines that are pseudo-testable (what is “lower secondary reading level” anyways?).

I think many in the community simply give WCAG 2.0 way too much credence. Our goal should be accessibility, not simply compliance. WCAG 2.0 should be one of many tools we use. If the tool isn’t perfect, use it for what it’s good for and ignore the parts you think are broken. Better yet, if you think you can make it better, get submitting those comments before Friday.

posted at 06:11 am on June 27, 2007 by Jared Smith

28 If we remove testability to take the cognitive tec

I agree that testability has interfered with the ability to include some cognitive Success Criteria and that as a result those cognitive techiques were included as advisory. But I have trouble with the logic of wanting to remove testability. WCAG 2.0 has most of the common techniques for cognitive disabilities that we would find among recommendations from leading cognitive experts. The objection is that WCAG has made them advisory, not that they have not included cognitive techniques.

But if we remove testability to get the Cognitive Techniques out of advisoy then the entire WCAG becomes advisory. We would not have not accomplished anything that I can see.

The spectum of cognitive disabiliies is wider than any other disability group. I think there is much benefit in looking at all the guidelines for places where they impact some people with cognitive issues.

I agree that there are some Level 3 issues such as Acronyms that I would have liked to see at level 2 but in general there are many Guideline whose primary target may be blind people or people other disabilities which also give substantial improvement of accessibility to some people with cognitive issues also.

In looking at Level one I would say there are 9 Success Criteria that improve access for some people with cognitive disabilities. For instance, I know a lady who has a form of dyslexia that prevents her from using a mouse. For her, every Success Criteria that makes the web site keyboard accessible is a benefit to her, in fact these Success Criteria are crucial to her employment. Some people with cognitive issues may benefit from have headings which programmatically determined because they may use a User Agent which takes advantage of Heading levels. Guidelines that prevent the web site from changing focus unexpectedly help some people with cognitive issues. Guidelines that extend time outs help some people with cognitive issues who are slower to respond. Contrast and flashing related guidelines help some people with cognitive disabilities. The 4.1 guideline that makes sure all content of the site meets level one swings us back around to apply these issues to other technologies or at least provide the content in another technology which does conform.

When we look at the guidelines through the eyes of different kinds of cognitive issues we find many Success Criteria that help many different kinds of cognitive disabilities.

posted at 05:56 pm on June 27, 2007 by David MacDonald

29 WCAG or WCAL?

It’s only when WCAG tries to become law that issues such as conformance, conformance level, testability, normative vs. non-normative, advisory, etc become issues.

Let’s look at WCAG for what is it, a great collection of guidance created by a body of experts from around the globe. Let’s stop trying to make it a standard. Please let’s stop trying to harmonize the world’s law to WCAG. After all it’s the Web Content Accessibility GUIDELINES not the Web Content Accessibility Law. (or is it?)

I could never agree that we need to end testability. As a member of Industry, I need a validator that will let me know if the thousands of the pages here will conform. I can’t check each by hand. I realize that at best only part of the guidelines can be machine testable, but even having part of them is better then none when faced with such a large web site. I would rather see more testing over none!

posted at 07:26 pm on June 27, 2007 by Donald Evans

30 Does testability matter?

Patrick Lauke
bq. if they’re subjective, and not testable, how can you ever hope to enforce them, say within an institution? and if the guidelines are taken as a basis for legislation, would you still want to wait for case-law to clarify each point (maybe having a jury of 10 people, or just a – non tech savvy – judge)?

There are so many things that can’t be quantified, but can still be verified. Many points of law do require subjective interpretation, and there’s no problem with that.

There are plenty of things that are mechanistically testable, and that’s great. We can still have automated reports that analyse most aspects of accessibility, which will be very useful to developers, particularly those new to accessibility.

But we shouldn’t sacrifice good practice for the sake of having testable guidelines. There are some aspects of accessibility that are not mechanistically testable, and I think it’s OK to say that, and leave it there. The farcical attempts to define “reliably human testable” makes it messy.

The guidelines are here to serve accessibility, not the other way round!

posted at 04:02 pm on June 28, 2007 by Stephen Down