Accessibility Self-Review for VCDM 2.0

[awoie]

The following is an Accessibility Self-Review for "W3C
Verifiable Credentials Data Model v2.0" (VCDM 2.0). The latest published version of the specification can be found here.

The specifications listed above is a JSON-LD data model specification and thus do not contain text, visuals, audio, or haptic data that will be experienced directly by a human being. However, certain properties used in concrete objects or instances of Verifiable Credentials or Verifiable Presentations may be used by developers in applications to display the information to the end user, which are internationalizable, but whose internationalization characteristics are up to each implementer.

The specification contains an Accessibility Considerations and an Internationalization Considerations section.

We believe that these specifications, in general, do not create accessibility concerns, but are curious to know if we have overlooked some aspect of how these technologies will be used that will create accessibility issues.

The specification is based on JSON-LD and hence supports extending the VCDM base vocabulary with additional vocabularies which are not defined by this specification and which are out-of-scope of this specification. It is expected that these extensions will have their own Accessibility considerations.

The following self-review question categories were analyzed and resulted in the following answers:

• The technology DOES NOT allow for visual rendering of content (with the exception of developers)
  Although the specification reserves a property renderMethod that acts as an extension point to render content of Verifiable Credentials, this specification does not directly allow for visual rendering of content. It is expected that concrete extensions (RDF classes) of renderMethod will have their own accessibility considerations.
• The technology DOES NOT provide author control over color
• The technology DOES NOT provide features to accept user input
• The technology DOES NOT provide user interaction features
• The technology DOES NOT define document semantics
• The technology DOES NOT provide time-based visual media
• The technology DOES NOT provide audio
• The technology DOES NOT allow time limits
  Although the specification does introduce validity periods for Verifiable Credentials, those time limits are set up by the issuer of the Verifiable Credential at the time of issuance and are not meant to have an impact on the end user experience of an application using Verifiable Credentials.
• The technology DOES NOT allow text content
  With the minor exception of the currently at risk feature TermsOfUse which defines an extension point for developers to define their own RDF class for TermsOfUse that can potentially contains text.
• The technology DOES NOT create objects that don't have an inherent text representation
• The technology DOES NOT provide content fallback mechanisms, whether text or other formats
• The technology DOES NOT provide visual graphics
• The technology DOES provide internationalization support
  Accessibility features can be internationalized to the same degree as other features. Specifically, the validity period for a Verifiable Credential is expressed using XML Schema 1.1 where the dates can be localized and made accessible given the nature of XML Schema 1.1 date time values.
• The technology DOES NOT define accessible alternative features
• The technology DOES NOT provide content directly for end-users
• The technology DOES NOT define an API
• The technology DOES NOT define a transmission protocol

[awoie]

Requested review from APA here w3c/a11y-request#65

[awoie]

w3c/a11y-request#65

Closing this issue since APA finished their review. Minutes can be found here.

[awoie]

@brentzundel @Sakurann APA review finished.