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Thread: ACR Best Practices
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From: Elisa D'Alessandro
Date: Wed, Dec 18 2019 7:08AM
Subject: ACR Best Practices
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Hi All,
I've been receiving audits asking to explain in detail how criteria are
supported. I am fully aware that explaining how criteria are not supported
or partially supported is critical, but I'm wondering how in depth you all
usually go into detail for criteria that is fully supported?
Thanks
From: glen walker
Date: Wed, Dec 18 2019 10:49AM
Subject: Re: ACR Best Practices
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I've never given details when I specify "supports" in the VPAT/ACR other
than saying something like "Instructions do not rely solely on sensory
characteristics" (for 1.3.3).
For "partially supports" or "does not support", I give specific examples of
what causes it to not support.
It sounds like you are being asked to give specific examples of supports?
I suppose for the 1.3.3 example, you'd have to find instructions on some
page, such as "all (*) fields are required". Those are instructions that
don't have sensory characteristics.
Perhaps that's all you need, a couple examples that work, such as proper
use of headings, tables, and lists for 1.3.1 or properly labeled form
elements for 4.1.2, etc.
From: Steve Green
Date: Wed, Dec 18 2019 11:06AM
Subject: Re: ACR Best Practices
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As an external supplier of accessibility services our approach is likely to be different from internal teams. The level of detail we write for "supports" in VPATs depends on how many hours the client is paying for. Given unlimited time, you could write a huge amount for each success criterion.
There is an excellent example at https://www.d2l.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/10/D2L-Brightspace-CORE-10.8.x-VPAT%C2%AE2.2-August-2018-1.pdf. I can't imagine how long it took to write that, but it will have been more than a few hours (maybe a couple of days) and it has clearly been given serious thought by someone who had thorough technical knowledge of the site and its coding.
Steve Green
Managing Director
Test Partners Ltd
From: Jonathan Avila
Date: Wed, Dec 18 2019 12:32PM
Subject: Re: ACR Best Practices
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It is important to demonstrate the knowledge and quality of the evaluation and efforts for supporting criteria to differentiate a product ACR from one that just marks all criteria as supports without accuracy. That is -- if someone doesn't provide supporting details -- then how will a procurer know which ACR is completed by a competent provider or someone who just checked the checkbox. There are additional ways such as having an ACR completed by a third party company, etc. -- but an easy way to demonstrate that an ACR was created with a thorough audit by an expert is to demonstrate this in the supporting remarks and comments. The response doesn't need to be long -- but perhaps a sentence, two, or three demonstrating steps taken -- e.g. use of heading, ARIA landmark, table structure for SC 1.3.1, etc.
Jonathan