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Re: clarification on related W3C work (was: Proof of compliance?)

for

From: Shadi Abou-Zahra
Date: Dec 14, 2017 1:53AM

Hello,

Apologies for a slightly longer response to clarify work of the cited
WAI-Tools Project and related efforts currently going on at W3C:


On 13/12/2017 22:55, Duff Johnson wrote:
>
>> The WAI Tools project indicates that they plan to create an open project/standard for accessibility statements.

Guidance on providing accessibility statements is a deliverable of the
W3C Education and Outreach Working Group (EOWG). It will be developed
with support of the EC-funded WAI-Tools Project. It is not expected to
be a standard but rather informative guidance. It will build on the
definitions of "conformance claims" and "evaluation statements", which
are provided by WCAG 2.x and WCAG-EM respectively:
- https://www.w3.org/TR/WCAG20/#conformance-claims
- https://www.w3.org/TR/WCAG-EM/#step5c

An accessibility statement could describe which parts of a website or
product are expected to be accessible or have accessibility barriers,
who to contact when barriers are encountered, and what improvements
plans there are. The exact details will be discussed in EOWG under the
W3C consensus process. This work is expected to start in spring 2018,
and work will be carried out in public as usual. Comments are welcome.


>> https://www.w3.org/WAI/Tools/ that may extend the WCAG-EM report Tool https://www.w3.org/WAI/eval/report-tool/#/

WAI-Tools Project intends to extend the WCAG-EM Report Tool in several
ways, including:

- Allow importing of test results from evaluation tools. This will be
based on the (machine-readable) Evaluation and Report Language (EARL)
https://www.w3.org/WAI/intro/earl

- Include machine-readable metadata (possibly using micro-formats of
EARL) in the human-readable reports generated by WCAG-EM Report Tool.
Currently machine-readable formats are only provided as JSON (of EARL).

- A tool that helps people to generate accessibility statements, which
will possibly be an extension to this WCAG-EM Report Tool. This will
also be developed through EOWG.


> 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/

The W3C work on Accessibility Conformance Testing (ACT) is related but
slightly separated. ACT is intended to document known ways of testing
content for accessibility, following WCAG 2.x:
-
https://www.w3.org/WAI/GL/task-forces/conformance-testing/wiki/ACT_Overview_-_What_is_ACT

The ACT Rules Format 1.0 defines how to write "test rules" for such
documentation. Having such a common format allows different people to
share their own test rules. Examples of such test rules are currently
being developed by the W3C Auto-WCAG Community Group:
- https://auto-wcag.github.io/auto-wcag/pages/rules.html

WAI-Tools Project will also develop such test rules, and support the
completion of the ACT Rules Format 1.0 and related deliverables of the
W3C ACT Task Force. Participation in these efforts is welcome too.

Regards,
Shadi

--
Shadi Abou-Zahra - http://www.w3.org/People/shadi/
Accessibility Strategy and Technology Specialist
Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI)
World Wide Web Consortium (W3C)