W3C - the World Wide Web Consortium Web Accessibility Initiative
Authoring Tool Guidelines Working Group

Issues for ATAG Evaluation Techniques

This document provides a guide to issues which are yet to be resolved, as well as those which have already been resolved, by the Authoring Tools Accessibility Guidelines Working Group (AUWG). It will be maintained through the life of the Authoring Tool Accessibility Guidelines Evaluation Techniques document, and updated regularly as new issues are raised or resolved. It will draw issues and resolution from meetings of the Working Group or from the email list w3c-wai-au@w3.org.

Unresolved Issues

  1. A step-by-step guide or a more general guide
  2. Taking account of different tools
  3. Risk of Evaluation Techniques superseding the Implementation Techniques and becoming de facto requirements
  4. Supporting accessible markup production checkpoints without checking tools for all WCAG checkpoints
  5. Checking of Guideline 7 checkpoints (related to accessible interface)
  6. Taking account of QA work

Resolved Issues

 


Unresolved Issues

Issues raised before last call:

1. Do we want the evaluation techniques to be a step-by-step procedure for people who are not familiar with ATAG? (i.e. "Open the file supplied and then perform X. If you see Y happen then the tool passes, if Z then it fails.") Or will the evaluation techniques be intended to support evaluations by people familiar with ATAG (i.e. "Here are some things to keep in mind when assessing X in the tool")? - Either way, how can we avoid specifying things at the level of markup (which is best left to WCAG whenever possible)? In other words, will we have to have a different set of tests for HTML, SVG?

2. How will we take into account all the different kinds of tools? Will we break the evaluation techniques into groups by ATAG checkpoint? Will we end up with something like the AERT but with different tool types rather than different markup languages.?

3. What will be the relationship be between the evaluation techniques and the implementation techniques? If we include implementation specifics in the tests (i.e. "To assess whether highlighting has been used in the dialog check whether any options are highlighted by ordering or color.") how will we avoid this being seen as limiting the creative flexibility of developers and becoming the de facto prescriptive requirements?

4. How can we support evaluation of checkpoints dealing with accessible output (for WCAG P1, P2 and P3) when checking tools are not up to the task yet? How much testing of output is sufficient?

5. How can we support checking of the accessibility interface checkpoints in guideline 7? Will we provide pointers to platform specific standards, "rules of thumb" for checking interfaces, etc.

6. How should we use the QA work (http://www.w3.org/TR/2002/WD-qaframe-spec-20020515/)

Resolved Issues:

 


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Last updated 29 May 2002 by Jan Richards (jan.richards@utoronto.ca)

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