- [Speaker] Back to our accessibility adventure
through WCAG 2.1,
the seventh public working draft.
This draft was published on December seventh by
the W3C, and I'm Glenda "The Goodwitch" Sims
coming to you from Deque.
Our focus today is going to be on the success criteria
that are coming up as proposals in WCAG 2.1
that are focused on the needs of people with
cognitive disabilities.
In our last episode, we talked about the needs
for low vision and covered the four success criterian
that are related to low vision.
In this episode, we'll talk about the six proposed
success criteria that are related to cognitive,
and in our next episode, we'll talk about the 10
proposed success criteria for mobile related to WCAG 2.1
and that'll give us a way to introduce you to
all 20 of the proposed new success criteria.
So, let's dig in.
When it comes to cognitive,
that's an area that
people with cognitive disabilities can benefit
greatly from additions to the web
content accessibility guidelines.
So I'm super excited to see six proposed
success criteria.
Let's look at them in the order that they're currently
appearing in the seventh public working draft.
The first one is called identify common purpose.
And before I read to you the SC text, I'm gonna tell you
what the purpose of this one is.
I want you to imagine that you're going to a
website for the very first time.
And you've never used the web
and you're looking around
at the controls, you've never seen a hamburger menu,
you've never understood what that gear symbol means.
You're not sure what the magnifying glass means,
and it's the same experience I have when I go to
a new website, trying to understand what are these controls?
So, this SC identify common purpose
is going to allow
interfaces to become more intuitive.
Specifically to people with cognitive disabilities,
but it actually benefit us all.
Now, I'm gonna read the SC text to you and the SC text
is kind of hard to parse.
But I'll explain it again when we get through.
In content implemented using markup languages,
for each user interface component
that serves a purpose
identified in the common purposes for user interface
components, that that purpose can
be programmatically determined.
So, that's a lot of words and it's well written, and
all those words are needed, but in a nutshell,
imagine that each common purpose control on a website
had a programmatic identification so that you could
always easily find where's the search on this page?
Where's the menu?
Where is the submit button?
Without having to look around and dig for it.
So that's the purpose of this.
It is coming in as a double a
proposed success criteria
and it's specifically from the cognitive taskforce.
I'm really excited about this, and following on
the first stage is the one I just described to you.
Identify common purpose, coming in at double a.
The second stage in making things more intuitive
for people with cognitive disabilities or any of us,
actually, will be a triple a
success criterian called contextual information.
This one is a little bit more future thinking.
Most people don't go to triple a, so don't worry
too much about this one yet, unless you're a pioneer.
You're an accessibility pioneer, then you will
wanna pay attention to this one.
And in this next one for contextual information,
instead of just going with a list of common purpose
user interface components like we saw in the previous one,
in this new SC for contextual information,
we're gonna go further.
We're gonna look for how can we personalize web content
for people with cognitive disabilities so that they
can understand it?
The persona quote for both of these SC, what would
a person say if you weren't doing these in the future,
they would say oh my gosh, I don't know how to
use this page, or I can't find this.
This is the key to future personalization
for people with cognitive disabilities and we should
actually do a whole session just on what's to come.
And I'll be excited in the next six months
to see some of these personalization features coming to life
during implementation phase of WCAG 2.1.
So it won't just be me describing the possibilities,
but you starting to see in action how this can
actually work, then it'll make a lot more sense.
The next of the SC for people with cognitive disabilities
specifically is called accessible authentication.
And it's at single level a.
Persona quote for this would be
hmm, are you trying to make it impossible for me to log in?
And you know, in this age of security breaches,
having an authentication process that makes sure
the right person is logged in before you share
private information is very important.
So that's definitely taken into account.
But don't make it so hard that people with
minimal cognitive disabilities or even intermediate
cognitive disabilities have no chance of logging in.
That's what this is about.
So I'm gonna give you a snippet of the SC text
for this one, and that is
essential steps of an
authentication process which rely upon recalling
or transcribing information have one of the following.
Alternative essential steps, which don't make you
recall or transcribe, or, a way to reset,
an authentication credential reset process.
And there is an exception.
Except for when the following are true.
If the authentication process involves basic
personal information like your name, your address,
your email address, your social security number.
Those that you can be expected to remember.
Or if it's not achievable due to legal requirements.
Cause we don't want to make things unsecure.
But let's make sure that our login processes
don't become so hard that human beings can't log in.
I think that'll help us all.
The next SC I'm actually quite happy about.
When I'm in personal time and perusing the web,
many sites throw interruptions at me.
Trying to get my attention, trying to get my dollar.
And they're really annoying to me.
For a person with a cognitive disability, those
interruptions can actually be destructive
to their mental process.
So, this next proposed SC is called interruptions minimum.
It's coming in at double a, and a persona quote for this
is stop interrupting me.
When a person's trying to focus on something,
let them focus, don't interrupt.
The proposed SC text for this as it stands right now
is a mechanism is available to postpone
and suppress interruptions and changes in content.
Unless they're initiated by the user or
involve an emergency.
So, while this is very important to people with
cognitive disabilities, I actually think there are
many of us that would say this'll make for a better
user experience for all.
The next one I wanna cover has to do with timeouts.
You be aware in WCAG 2.0
that there already is
SC related to time,
and that's a good one.
But what we're wanting to do in this proposal for
timeouts at triple a in WCAG 2.1
is to let you know in advance that there is
a timeout on the page.
Not to tell you when you only have two minutes left
and let you extend, extend, extend.
Which is useful, WCAG 2.0 is still in place for that,
but why can't I tell you at the beginning so you're
not surprised by it later in the process?
A persona quote for this timeout requirement would be
curses, what just happened?
I didn't know that there was a timeout, I would've
been more prepared.
So, the specific SC text for this currently reads
when data can be lost due to user inactivity,
users are warned about the estimated length of inactivity
that generates the data loss.
Unless the data is preserved for a minimum of
20 hours of user inactivity.
So we're letting people know in advance.
I think that will be very helpful.
And the last one,
I don't know about y'all,
but animations on some web content
can be less than beautiful, to me,
and for people with
cognitive disabilities that animation from an
interaction might actually make it so
that their brain cannot focus on what they need to focus.
WCAG 2.0 we already have pause, stop, and hide
which helps, but this takes it one step further.
Animations from interactions at triple a, my persona quote
for that is I'm sure you think your animations are cute,
but they're making me nauseous.
They're making me dizzy so my brain can't even
comprehend the page.
Specific SC text for animations from interactions
currently sits as this.
For nonessential animations triggered by a user action
there's a mechanism to disable the animation,
yet still perform the action.
So, we're leaning more towards don't force animations
that are not required on people, cause it literally
might make them dizzy.
That's a quick tour through the six proposed SC
that are coming from cognitive in WCAG 2.1 working draft.
I'm looking forward to next week diving into the
10 SC that are coming in for mobile.
Looking forward to talking to you then.