2.4.7 Focus Visible: WCAG 2.1 Understanding has wrong level (A instead of AA)

[yatil]

Follow up from #1162:

The Understanding document for “Focus Visible” for WCAG 2.1 says the SC is Level A, in reality, it should be marked as AA:

Success Criterion 2.4.7 Focus Visible (Level A): Any keyboard operable user interface has a mode of operation where the keyboard focus indicator is visible.

Emphasis mine.

At least the text should say “(Level AA in WCAG 2.1, will be Level A in WCAG 2.2)” or something similar.

https://www.w3.org/WAI/WCAG21/Understanding/focus-visible.html

[guyhickling]

Hmmm. It seems this change of level is causing administrative problems before it has even got out of the door!

[yatil]

I’m super concerned that this issue persists for at least three weeks now (as it was raised first by Patrick in #1162)… It undermines the essential trust in WAI and WCAG resources.

[alastc]

We're in the process of setting up separate locations for 2.1 & 2.1, including changing how the build process works. We discussed the change in the group (no issues raised), so it should be resolved soon.

[karlgroves]

I’m super concerned that this issue persists for at least three weeks now (as it was raised first by Patrick in #1162)… It undermines the essential trust in WAI and WCAG resources.

@yatil is correct. See discussion on IAAP message forum

[yatil]

To quote from the (closed) forum anonymously:

It is listed as [AA] on almost every website I come across except for the W3C's Understanding Success Criteria 2.4.7 which has it as a Level A. You would think if anybody had it right, it should be them.

[bruce-usab]

@karlgroves three weeks is really not that much time for this sort of subtle bug IMHO.

This is strictly just an issue with 2.2 Understanding. It is not an issue with 2.2 text, and not an issue with Understanding for 2.0 or 2.1. Definitely something important to work out though, since the WG wants to be able to promote SC from AA to A if needed.

1. Anyone have any real-world experience where the difference between A and AA matters in practice? (I think it could come up if an organization has a really bad website, and they need to triage what to work on first.)

2. Anyone have any real-world experience where the site owner is looking for 2.2 conformance (and not 2.1 or 2.0)?

[patrickhlauke]

three weeks is really not that much time for this sort of subtle bug IMHO

It was three weeks back in July. Now it's...quite a few more weeks.

This is strictly just an issue with 2.2 Understanding

No it's an issue with 2.1 Understanding. The understanding for the current version of WCAG where this is still at level AA.

[guyhickling]

Anyone have any real-world experience where the difference between A and AA matters in practice?

Yes, I have. I was once asked to do an audit at A Level only. That's once in 5 years of auditing. It's that important!

[yatil]

Personally I’m all for having only two levels, but in practice, many laws and policies have adopted and codified the split between A and AA.

Also, this is not about real-world experience, it is about correct documentation of WCAG SCs. And in 2.1 it is level AA, no A as the documentation currently says, confusing people who rely on said documentation. And while I think the impact is relatively low, the readers of the documentation trip up on inconsistencies. And that’s not what accessibility is all about.

Anyone have any real-world experience where the site owner is looking for 2.2 conformance (and not 2.1 or 2.0)?

WCAG 2.2 is not ready yet, so no. And even if so, you cannot be 2.2 compliant without being 2.1 and 2.0 compliant.

[detlevhfischer]

I remember there being some discussion in the Working Group whether 2.4.7 should be advanced to level A in WCAG 2.2, in tune to having 2.4.11 on level AA, but cannot remember whether there was a definitive outcome of that. @alastc ?

[yatil]

Can we not derail the conversation here? This issue is strictly about the WCAG 2.1 Understanding document saying that 2.4.7 Focus Visible is level A while in 2.1 – regardless of the discussion about 2.2 – it is level AA.

I would like to ask people to discuss future versions of WCAG in a separate issue.

[patrickhlauke]

I just find it cute that back in those discussions, when folks mentioned that changing the level of an SC between point release versions would cause problems for tools (that they'd essentially need to special-case, or keep completely separate versions of, SCs that were supposedly shared/the same between versions). and those concerns were handwaved...

fast foward to now, and even WCAG's documentation itself can't square this circle yet...

anyway, yes: whether this is a "real-world" problem or not, the fact remains that the official documentation for WCAG is still incorrectly stating things. we can be cavalier about this ("no time to fix, all efforts now on 2.2"), but it's certainly not a good look...

[detlevhfischer]

@yatil I was not trying to derail anything - I just thought it might be helpful to provide context as to how this change might have come about. I fully agree that we should keep the documentation consistent.

[jake-abma]

(
for people interested, NOT trying to derail... :-) )

#1041
https://www.w3.org/2020/06/09-ag-minutes.html#item0
https://www.w3.org/2002/09/wbs/35422/focus-visible-enh-issues2/results#x1041
)

[bruce-usab]

Thanks @jake-abma for those reminders. My apologies to all for missing that the 2.1 Understanding page is not rendering correctly. Now I am not sure what I looked at before making that comment!

@guyhickling wrote:

Yes, I have. I was once asked to do an audit at A Level only. That's once in 5 years of auditing. It's that important!

Thanks, I am actually quite encouraged to hear this! Level A is supposed to set a significant bar for accessibility, so this is some evidence that the multiple levels do have utility. Frankly, I am a bit surprised that this sort of scenario is not more common. And for these folks, 2.4.7 being included is appropriate IMHO.

[alastc]

Apologies, it's taken a while to get the background work on the separation done, several other things have been taking a lot of time recently.

It should be resolved on the next publishing of the docs, hopefully this week.

[yatil]

This is still not fixed.

[alastc]

The source is correct for the SC text and understanding doc in the 2.1 branch, @michael-n-cooper - is there something else that needs to happen to update the SC text in the understanding document?

[alastc]

This has been fixed with a re-publishing.

[guyhickling]

so this is some evidence that the multiple levels do have utility

Actually, you seem to have missed the point I was trying to make! I meant that being asked only once, in all of five years, shows how utterly unimportant the A-AA distinction is. And by the way, I just explained to the person who asked for that audit that they needed AA compliance not single A, in order to meet national and international standards, and they opted to go for the AA audit! (And no, it didn't cost them any more.)