

Re: Conformance to EARL

Date: Wed, 25 May 2005 16:41:38 +0200
Message-ID: <42948EA2.7010107@w3.org>
To: Charles McCathieNevile <chaals@opera.com>
Cc: "public-wai-ert@w3.org" <public-wai-ert@w3.org>


Charles McCathieNevile wrote:
> I don't think so. I think we should specify that things like producing  
> "valid EARL plus other made-up EARL" as non-conformant behaviour, since  
> this can harm interoperability (less so because EARL is RDF and not 
> XML,  but is still a bad idea).

In several areas, it makes sense to extend a core EARL with domain specific vocabulary. For example, I want to use mycompany:toaster as an earl:subject (I am testing toasters for their ergonomy and want to record my findings in machine readable format).

Similarly, specify earl:WebContent as a built-in subject subclass because our main motivation in this group is Web accessibility and it is also something we have expertise in. However, we agreed that we need to open up to generic QA where there are endless domains we can not control.

Is it essential for a generic EARL processing tool (for example a QA statistics generator) to know about the domain of toasters or just that the subject is a toaster? All we need to do is require that an earl:assertion contains exactly one (or whatever we define) earl:subject (or a subclass thereof). This way we ensure interoperability yet at the same time openness for domain specific extensions.

Another advantage to this approach is to monitor what extensions tool developers come up with over time and slowly integrate them into core EARL in future versions if appropriate.


Shadi Abou-Zahra,       Web Accessibility Specialist for Europe 
IST WAI-TIES Project (WAI-TIES)     http://www.w3.org/WAI/TIES/ 
Evaluation and Repair Tools (ERT WG), http://www.w3.org/WAI/ER/ 
2004, Route des Lucioles BP93 - 06560 Sophia-Antipolis - France 
Received on Wednesday, 25 May 2005 14:41:33 GMT
