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Re: Thoughts on citing multiple WCAG criteria for one issue

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From: Tim Harshbarger
Date: Nov 18, 2019 3:23AM

I think there may be a couple reasons why listing all the relevant success criteria for an element might be the better approach.

I think one reason it is attractive just to let a single success criterion to stand in for others is because we guess that fixing that one issue will fix all the other success criteria we would have listed for the same element. However, project teams can be quite imaginative in how they solve accessibility issues and it is possible that they might implement a solution that only fixes the criterion you listed--and none of the criteria you chose not to list. Unfortunately, that puts us in a situation where we have to return to the project team to let them know about additional accessibility defects of which they were unaware.

I think the other reason is educational. For example, if they have an image link without alt text, citing multiple issues (even though you can fix multiple issues with one approach) teaches them that images need alternative text and links need accessible text--if they pick up on that information, that is something they can use in the future to avoid either type of issue.

I'm not saying there is no reason for taking the other approach or the other approach always creates problems, but that it seems to me that listing all the relevant issues for an element might be the better approach.

Thanks,
Tim Harshbarger
Senior Accessibility Consultant
Deque Systems
-----Original Message-----
From: WebAIM-Forum < <EMAIL REMOVED> > On Behalf Of glen walker
Sent: Sunday, November 17, 2019 6:28 PM
To: WebAIM Discussion List < <EMAIL REMOVED> >
Subject: Re: [WebAIM] Thoughts on citing multiple WCAG criteria for one issue

Thanks for the thoughts (especially on a weekend).

I had looked at the a11yTO slides a couple weeks ago :-) In fact, I had a question about slide 51 and whether the example did indeed fail 1.4.1 while passing 1.4.11.
I don't have a recording of a11yTO so didn't have the context of the slides but I presume if the different colors ("sign in") have meaning, then it would be a 1.4.1 issue. I'm not going to delve into the topic of defining what "color" means.


On Sun, Nov 17, 2019 at 4:38 PM Patrick H. Lauke < <EMAIL REMOVED> >
wrote:

> On 17/11/2019 23:35, Patrick H. Lauke wrote:
> >> As another example, if you have an image embedded in a link and the
> >> link itself does not have any visual text and the image doesn't
> >> have alt
> text,
> >> that could be both 1.1.1 and 2.4.4.
> >
> > And also 4.1.2, as then the link lacks an accessible name too.
>
> And, incidentally, I call these sorts of things "Cascades of fail" -
> see slide 30 from my recent a11yTO talk here
> https://patrickhlauke.github.io/wcag-interpretation/#30 :)
>
>
>