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Re: Proof of compliance?

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From: Duff Johnson
Date: Dec 13, 2017 2:55PM

> The WAI Tools project indicates that they plan to create an open project/standard for accessibility statements.
> https://www.w3.org/WAI/Tools/ that may extend the WCAG-EM report Tool https://www.w3.org/WAI/eval/report-tool/#/

I've been studying the Rules format and I like, in general, what I see.

https://www.w3.org/TR/act-rules-format-1.0/

I am thinking about how this model could be implemented with respect to PDF/UA.

Just informationally… (I'm not necessarily recommending this approach):

PDF/UA makes a couple of crucial moves that differ from WCAG 2.0. Key to the distinction (beyond being machine-readable, which is simply workflow-enablement) is the recognition that our objective in PDF/UA is to provide a means of asserting a useful conformance *claim*. A claim is not a conformance *fact*. It's more like an assertion of intent (to make stuff accessible), an assertion of awareness of what the "right thing to do" is, and a stated willingness to correct problems when reported. It is a means of generating accountability for the accessibility of specific units of content in a lasting manner.

To take this road, PDF/UA conformance claims *require* PDF/UA metadata. Of course, a PDF may be perfectly accessible in the absence of the metadata, but that misses the point. Claiming PDF/UA conformance represents a willingness to be accountable for one's document. It provides managers (and regulators) with a clean-cut means of managing their content for accessibility.

Fanciful supposition...

If this model were implemented in the HTML world for WCAG 2.0 purposes, I imagine that one's content-management and/or accessibility-management software would remove the WCAG 2.0 conformance metadata flag (and its associated expression on the affected page(s)) whenever a change to a given page (whether the change was site-wide or page-specific) caused that assertion to be in question. Restoring the conformance claim metadata to the page would be based on some sort of testing; automated or (if necessary) manual.

The accessibility flag would then have a specific - and useful - purpose.

…and why not? This is more-or-less the sort of content-management practice we want to promote, right?

Duff.

< awaits schooling on web technology shibboleths :-) >