Equity Framework
Return to Equity Subgroup
This is the draft document. It is just a placeholder at the moment. We will figure out an outline and where we are going with it.
- Improving Equity research summary slide deck slide deck summarizing the research and prototypes as of Q3 2022
- Meaningful Involvement research and proposals - Proposal to extend Silver to cover requirements for involving people with disabilities in the digital authoring process. Based on 11 September 2018 meeting.
- Maturity Model - link to the Editor's Draft
- Evaluating Procedures proposal (from Protocols sub-group) is a way of addressing equity
- 10 Principles of Design Justice originating from Sasha Costanza-Chock author of Design Justice
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2017 graphic from Robert J. Wood on Health Equity
- Equality vs. Equity - Aaron Gustafson Specifically:
"Though I didn’t make the connection until much later, the philosophy of progressive enhancement in web design, which I’ve been advocating for nearly two decades now, is very much the embodiment of equity. It’s concerned with building interfaces that adapt to a wide range of circumstances, both tied to an individual user’s capabilities as well as those of the devices, networks, and environment in which they are accessing our creations."
- In the U.S. there is a new Digital Equity Act to address the digital divide in the U.S.
We are looking at definitions of "equity" that are accepted in different areas. "Equity" and "equal" are similar, but not the same concepts. We want to look at what "equity" means specifically to WCAG2 and WCAG3. These are some of the ideas we had:
- In English, equivalent is not the same as equal. = vs ≅ It allows more concepts to be addressed. Math symbol is called “congruent” or “approximately equal”
- Merriam-Webster 'Equity' and 'Equality' — "Sameness or equal distribution are the principal denotations of equality." This aligns with the working definition of accessibility, that those have access. Equity adds "justice, fairness, and impartiality, the principal denotations of equity." With equity we aim to restore justice.
- "Equality is equal access, while 'equity' is equal outcomes." - Antoinette Carroll, Creative Reaction Lab Founder
- Consider equity not so much as an outcome but as a process that we consistently engage in to ensure that people with disabilities are not marginalized, excluded, or deprived from an equitable outcome. It is a lens and filter.
- Disability groups are not disadvantaged by the conformance model, e.g., some groups relegated to AAA or Gold or whatever we call it.
- Usability for a site at a given conformance level is approximately equivalent across disability groups. ** NOTE: not sure how to measure that and added it to the Known Challenges section.
- Groups are not “forgotten about” during the development process.
- Awareness of and efforts to resolve issues caused by barriers to participation in the AG, such as culture, language, tools, and time zone.
- Guidance is not omitted because of measurability concerns, instead we come up with realistic ways to measure all guidance. ** NOTE: There has been concern how that can fit in a regulatory environment. We may not be able to do all of it, but can help regulators make choices with more guidance.
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Equity is more than fairness and justice in the way people are treated. It describes something deeper and more complex. It is about people getting what they need to succeed: beyond just access, but to comparable opportunity, resources, and support, etc.
** NOTE: In the past, there has been a resistance to scope broadening of talking about "access to opportunity, resources, and support" - For people with disabilities paired with other socio-economic characteristics, marginalization's effect on the intersectional becomes even more impactful. Consider Veterans with disabilities on tribal lands, People of Color sexual assault survivors that develop PTSD or TBI.
Equity is the continual process of providing and enhancing the web technologies people need to succeed.
It is not requiring all content providers to implement every known accessibility markup, because some of these will be edge cases inappropriate to certain user groups. It does require that basic functional needs will be met so that any user with average web skills can interact successfully with content. Also, it requires that any user requiring additional content for those edge cases will have a clear mechanism to obtain that additional markup in a timely manner.
Equity is the goal as the W3C evaluates documented guidelines. This requires evaluating through a variety of lenses from disability through socio-economic characteristics to consider impact on equity. Equity is the "perfect" and we are unlikely to fully attain it since technology is introduced and evolves so quickly, though that should not stop our efforts to deliver equitable outcomes.
As we discussed, we wanted to capture some of the edge cases that need to be considered as part of equity. This is a parking area for the ideas, they are not developed.
- Cognitive and Deaf needs having many of their needs be optional
- The company being sued by a person with a hearing disability that wants to prioritize remediation for hearing barriers.
- A site that teaches ASL being accessible to screen readers.
- Music site that offers audio recordings that aren’t meaningfully captionable.
- Many people with disabilities also have socioeconomic challenges that result in slower older equipment and bandwidth. Progressive enhancement is a technical solution that could potentially be included in guidelines.
- Because some guidelines are more resource intensive than others, there is a natural tendency to want to remove the most resource intensive guidelines, which decreases equity. Support for Sign Language, Plain Language, and Good Design are examples of this.
- Absent Personalization, a known challenge is technical solutions that support one group but make things harder for another group.
- How do we incorporate normative guidelines content that we don´t ourselves have expertise on?
- Differing needs within the same community. [https://dcmp.org/learn/captioningkey Caption Key] notes the following, which will need to be decided upon: "A re-occurring question about captioning is whether captions should be verbatim or edited. Among the advocates for verbatim are organizations of deaf and hard of hearing persons who do not believe that their right for equal access to information and dialogue is served by any deletion or change of words. Supporters of edited captions include parents and teachers who call for the editing of captions on the grounds that the reading rates necessitated by verbatim captions can be so high that captions are almost impossible to follow." ** Comprehension is more important for understandable for what remains available over time.
- Complexity in scoring and the conformance model. Not as easy to score as WCAG2x true/false. ** The problem of small sites with small resources can have an impact on uptake. A potential solution is to have different conformance models for different groups. For example, small business should meet Easy Checks and have an accessible framework. This has implications across different subgroups working on solutions.
- Usability for a site at a given conformance level is approximately equivalent across disability groups. ** NOTE: not sure how to measure that from a technological point of view. User Journey project and testing across functional needs could be a path forward.
- How to include use cases for including Intersectional Usability in Guidelines, for example, recognizing that many people with disabilities also have socioeconomic challenges that result in slower older equipment and bandwidth. Progressive enhancement is a technical solution that could potentially be included in guidelines.
- Should Equity assist in uptake of WCAG3 by regulators?
- How do we incorporate guidance for functional needs for which we lack expertise in the group?
- How can we add guidance for technological solutions that don't yet exist?
- How do we make WCAG conformance realistically adoptable for various organization types?
- How do we address circumstances where user groups have conflicting needs? (Again the example of captioning exactly)
- Could including more functional categories could get a better score and less functional categories would get a poorer score? Would that improve equity or reduce it in practice?
- How can we make the usability of the guidelines equitable across user needs (a blind person being able to caption or judge color contrast). Guidelines should be implementable by people with disabilities. (A variant of "Nothing About Us Without Us)
- In a guideline specification, how far can we go to support socioeconomic impact on people with disabilities?