No harm from algorithms
Normative Text
[Title, role, or organization] asserts that:
- Content author(s) conduct usability testing and ethics reviews to minimize the possibility that algorithms disadvantage people with disabilities.
Tests
This content needs to be written.
Key Terms
- actively available
available for the user to perceive and use
- automated evaluation
evaluation conducted using software tools, typically evaluating code-level features and applying heuristics for other tests
Automated testing is contrasted with other types of testing that involve human judgement or experience. Semi-automated evaluation allows machines to guide humans to areas that need inspection. The emerging field of testing conducted via machine learning is not included in this definition.
- conformance
satisfying all the requirements of the guidelines
Conformance is an important part of following the guidelines even when not making a formal Conformance Claim
See the Conformance section for more information.
- conformance scope
A set of Views and/or Pages selected to be part of a conformance claim. Where a View or Page is part of a Process, all the Views or Pages in the process must be included.
How a person or organization selects the set is not defined in WCAG3. There maybe informative guidance on selecting a suitable set in future (similar to WCAG-EM), but regional laws or regulations may provide a methodology.
- content
information, sensory experience and interactions conveyed
person or persons responsible for the content presented, including word choice, formatting, images, video, audio, and other elements
- evaluation
process of examining content for conformance to these guidelines
Different approaches to evaluation include automated evaluation, semi-automated evaluation, human evaluation, and usability testing.
- human evaluation
evaluation conducted by a human, typically to apply human judgement to tests that cannot be fully automatically evaluated
Human evaluation is contrasted with automated evaluation which is done entirely by machine, though it includes semi-automated evaluation which allows machines to guide humans to areas that need inspection. Human evaluation involves inspection of content features, in contrast with usability testing which directly tests the experience of users with content.
- page
non-embedded resource obtained from a single URI using HTTP plus any other resources that are used in the rendering or intended to be rendered together
Where a URI is available and represents a unique set of content, that would be the preferred conformance unit.
- platform
software, or collection of layers of software, that lies below the subject software and provides services to the subject software and that allows the subject software to be isolated from the hardware, drivers, and other software below
Platform software both makes it easier for subject software to run on different hardware, and provides the subject software with many services (e.g. functions, utilities, libraries) that make the subject software easier to write, keep updated, and work more uniformly with other subject software.
A particular software component might play the role of a platform in some situations and a client in others. For example a browser is a platform for the content of the page but it also relies on the operating system below it.
The platform is the context in which the conformance scope exists.
- process
series of views or pages associated with user actions, where actions required to complete an activity are performed, often in a certain order, regardless of the technologies used or whether it spans different sites or domains
- semi-automated evaluation
evaluation conducted using machines to guide humans to areas that need inspection
Semi-automated evaluation involves components of automated evaluation and human evaluation.
- usability testing
evaluation of the experience of users using a conformance scope or process by observation and feedback
- view
content that is actively available in a viewport including that which can be scrolled or panned to, and any additional content that is included by expansion while leaving the rest of the content in the viewport actively available
A modal dialog box would constitute a new view because the other content in the viewport is no longer actively available.
- viewport
object in which the platform presents content
The author has no control of the viewport and almost always has no idea what is presented in a viewport (e.g. what is on screen) because it is provided by the platform. On browsers the hardware platform is isolated from the content.
Content can be presented through one or more viewports. Viewports include windows, frames, loudspeakers, and virtual magnifying glasses. A viewport may contain another viewport. For example, nested frames. Interface components created by the user agent such as prompts, menus, and alerts are not viewports.