WCAG 2.2 Understanding: Position of “In Brief“ sections

[yatil]

In the Understanding the “In Brief” sections are now the first content that is available in the Understanding Documents (Example). This pushes the actual SC text down, on mobile way out of the viewport.

The idea of the “in brief” sections is interesting, but the execution has a lot of jargon and often over-simplifies success criteria. In the position where they have been (between the SC text and the Intent section), they made more sense. The cohesion between the SC name and the actual SC text also was more intact.

It looks like the order was changed in the following Pull Request:

• Reposition In Brief content #3867

The PR contains no reference to a discussion of the issue or reasons why this order is better. I don’t think it is. Revert the change.

[vavroom]

I could see how having the "in brief" as the first step would make sense for some users, particularly around cognitive accessibility. But if the SC itself is pushed away from the initial view, it could be a problem. And when the content of the in brief isn't super clear or consistently written from one SC to the next, we have a problem. But just making this change through PR and no discussion, that seems contrary to the spirit of consensus that should permeate the work at W3C.

[dotjay]

Overall, I’m inclined to agree that the success criterion text should come before the “In Brief” section, although I must admit that I’m a little torn.

I think many experienced accessibility professionals will feel that WCAG and its SCs can be jargon-filled and confusing for web practitioners, and so would welcome the summary text. A focus on a clear and concise summary for a document focussed on helping people understand a criterion makes sense.

However, even though I feel the text of the SCs themselves are not the clearest, I feel it makes more sense to fully “set the context” first and then explain.

[FMJansen]

I've been confused by this order in everyday usage multiple times. As the rest of the page helps understand the Success Criterion, I'd like it to start with and then expand on the SC, too.

[alastc]

In terms of history, this has been an iterative bit of work for more than a year, starting back with #744, and #2905.

We discussed and agreed the positioning aspect almost a year ago, it's just taken a little while to get the technical side working. It was also in collaboration with the Education and Outreach group, who spend more time working/talking with people less familiar with the guidelines & docs.

I'm not seeing new information which would cause us to re-open this decision.

Personally (chair hat off), I think we should optimize the understanding documents for people who are less familiar with the guidelines, and the in-brief section is better for introducing people to the concept of the SC than the SC text itself.

I also disagree that it uses a lot of jargon, especially when compared to the SC text. In the example Eric pointed to, "Assistive technology" is the only jargon, the rest is plain-language.

[yatil]

I can't for the life of me understand how these sections make it clearer, they seem to just repeat themselves over again. But that's not the point of this issue which is that I now can't point clients to this because it looks like the in brief somehow is part of the SC. It's another layer of bad design, in addition to the horizontal scrolling and large menu on mobile.

I would love to see where the user testing is that EO made for this, especially with commercial clients. It feels very much vibes based (which my issue is, too).

ALAS, it was discussed and decided, so I'll close my issue.

[alastc]

I'm not really understanding why you'd consider the in-brief part of the SC text, but if it helps, you can add #success-criterion to the URL, e.g.
https://www.w3.org/WAI/WCAG22/Understanding/language-of-parts.html#success-criterion

That will set the window to the SC text.

[yatil]

Apart that it’s impossible then to see the title of the SC as a unit with the text, which I would say is also confusing. I link to Understanding as a reference all the time. For clients, it can be confusing. I would rather not link to a heading-less page.

[yatil]

7 days after closing this issue, I see an “in brief” goal quoted as if it was normative text. Just leaving this anecdotal data here for my own reference.