Assigned to EA @eadraffan https://www.w3.org/WAI/GL/wiki/SC_Managers_Phase1

As the success criteria manager for SC 50 I am concerned that there is a note that states "It is a bit controversial to say that people with Aphasia, etc. are not in an intended audience. However, when we remove the intended audience clause this seems to become a AAA conformance criterion, which is more problematic. We are open to other alternatives." Could someone please help me see how we can get round this issue so we can remove the note?

I know that the use of symbols to clarify text for those with cognitive impairments (in particular those who have poor literacy skills) can be very important and so is gaining AA Priority level dependent on the inclusion of certain disabilities or the types of key content that should have symbols and is testable?

Please forgive me if this sounds an odd question. Many thanks.

Let us remove the note and take out "Any content that is intended for a wide audience. " from the description and change it to "critical information about rights and freedoms"
and change the SC to

Extra Symbols: Provide symbols or pictures at the beginning of short sentences and phrases to aid understanding for critical content and services.

critical content and services are content and services needed to prevent significant harm, risk or loss such as: significant financial loss, illness, injury or deterioration in a patient's condition or effective loss of rights or freedoms.

we also want to add a AAA
Extra Symbols: Provide symbols or pictures at the beginning of short sentences and phrases

Hang on a sec. if the tooling is available (eg the IBM demo) for this to be automatic and personable why not just have
Extra Symbols: A mechanism is available to provide symbols or pictures at the beginning of short sentences and phrases
level AA

Also the sematics are in https://w3c.github.io/personalization-semantics/ that are widely availible without using ibm tools

compromise:

Extra Symbols: Provide symbols or pictures at the beginning or above critical short sentences and phrases to aid understanding for important information and for critical content and services.

critical content and services are content and services needed to prevent significant harm, risk or loss such as: significant financial loss, illness, injury or deterioration in a patient's condition or effective loss of rights or freedoms.

important information is already defined

critical short sentences and phrases: These are text links and controls and key terms where each paragraph would have one key term that highlight the topic

@eadraffan Can I have a status update on this please?

Lisa and I are the only ones who have commented so I feel this SC has not yet reached a wider audience and I mentioned this on the WCAG list a couple of days ago.

I've been asked to comment on this. Here's a punch list on what I see challenging.

• We can't talk about what users can and can't do in an SC nor the characteristics of their disability... that type of information is in the How to Meet so we'd have remove "...to aid understanding for all content where people who use augmentative/alternative communication systems, have expressive and receptive written language difficulties, or have intellectual disabilities are in the intended audience."

• there's no library of industry accepted standard of pictures that I know available, so any picture would pass.

• It basically says, "if your content is for people with this type of disability, then... do this". This is an unprecedented construct for an SC. The SCs are supposed to apply to all content, rather than a limited audience. It's a very specialized SC which would probably be better in a how to guide for communicating with people with communication disabilities.
  The best fix I could offer is something like:

Extra Symbols: Each sentence that has [these characteristics] is preceded by a symbol or picture, which relates to the topic of the phrase.

OR

Each distinct instruction that contains important information related to critical services is preceded by a symbol or picture, which relates to the topic of the instruction.

Critical services: related to healthy or safety or financial loss over $X.

I really like the last one David as a fix and thank you so much for the clarity. I will await Lisa's comment as to how to move this forward.

@DavidMacDonald
I am trying to add the links /controls into you wording.
Extra Symbols: A mechanism is available such that controls that are used to reach, or are part of, a critical service, and each instruction that contains important information that directly relates to a critical service, is preceded by a symbol or picture, which relates to the topic of the control or instruction.

This allows you to conform via an api pr personlization and includes controls and links

critical services and important information already are defined

Lisa I really like your new wording
@DavidMacDonald
Please does anyone have a problem with this? It will be submitted for a pull request if we do not have an comments by the end of the day.

this is now a pull request Extra Symbols (issue 50) #115

I like #50 and I think we can get it in with some minor changes. "A mechanism is available" doesn't apply here, because the symbols are something that the author has to add, or the author has to add semantic markup that an assistive technology can pick up on. Otherwise the user agent or some other "mechanism is available" wouldn't know what symbol to use. I like parts of the original (except it is too broad); your comments were spot-on; I like one of Lisa's revisions (narrowing the scope to critical comments) and I like David's proposal. Let's see if we can put them all together. I changed the sentence structure around to active voice. I used "precede" because we have to think about different reading language orientations (like right-to-left and the 4 modern languages that are bottom-to-top)

Extra Symbols: Precede critical content and critical controls with either:

• a pictorial symbol that relates to the topic of the instruction or control; or
• provide programmatically determinable semantic markup that contains the topic of the content or control.

Definition of "critical content; critical controls": related to health, safety, privacy, or financial loss. (I don't think we can say a $ amount, as that doesn't translate across cultures. )

I think the Technique provides some good information, but it would be very helpful to provide examples of the coga- markup and links to list of sources for pictorial symbols. I found a few in a quick Google search, but you probably have links to the best ones in your research.

@jspellman For a WCAG SC, we can't tell the author to do something. We have to state it as a condition that can be answered true/false. If we want it in the active voice it would have to be something like.

A <glossary-link> topical pictorial symbol</glossary-link> or <glossary-link>programmatically determinable semantic markup </glossary-link> precedes critical contents or controls.

@DavidMacDonald thanks for the info on WCAG editorial standard for verb tense. I am used to active tense for SCs, but will adapt to WCAG verb tense. I like David's latest proposal.

Updated the issue description to reflect the FPWD text and reopening issue.

Can I +1 David's update? It was after the pull request but I think it would be a good update for next time.

Just to make sure your other commented is noted Alastair and we do not lose all the ideas since the pull request, I have added the link about using the word 'support' to precede the SC as suggested in github #159 (comment).

Possible addition to the option below:

Support Extra Symbols: A mechanism is available such that controls that are used to reach, or are part of, a critical service, and each instruction that contains important information that directly relates to a critical service, is preceded by a symbol or picture, which relates to the topic of the control or instruction.

I put the 'support' aspect to the whole WG on the list, I think it is a good idea but wanted to see if that was a suitable word.

If it were taken on, and including David's update with my own spin, I think that would make it:

Support extra symbols: Critical contents or controls include a related pictorial symbol preceding the text or equivalent metadata.

That removes the 'mechanism available' because it states the mechanisms and has the 'support' prefix. Does it loose anything?

The 'reach' aspect isn't clear to me, but I think that could be clarified in the definition of critical controls / content.

I am trying to workout what the final wording should be for this SC before this is committed. Is this now correct?

Support extra symbols: A topical pictorial symbol or programmatically determinable semantic markup precedes critical content or controls.

I also prefer this new version - it makes a lot more sense to me now. I kept reading the first version, and I could not wrap my head around it. "Topical pictorial symbol" would definitely need its own definition though.

The word "content" in WCAG refers to anything on the page, including controls. I added back in the original intent of a "critical service" which is a very specific thing. "Critical content" could be very wide.

"Support extra symbols: A topical pictorial symbol or programmatically determinable semantic markup precedes content used to reach, or is part of, a critical service ."

Critical services: Related to healthy or safety.

We'll have to see if the "programmatically determinable semantic markup" is mature by FPWD, otherwise drop it?