In Brief buries the most important content on the page: The success criterion text

[kimviens]

Hi everyone,
This is just user feedback but I find that putting the "In Brief" section before the success criterion's text is inconvenient. To me, it buries the most crucial information. The "In Brief" is non-normative and is useful for getting more information about the criteria, its optional information.
If I could vote, I would like to see the "In Brief" underneath the success criteria.
I like to be given the most important information first and then its up to me if I want to go deeper into the document. I find myself wanting to swat the "In Brief" section away like its a fly in my vision everytime I open one of these pages to remind myself what is the normative text of the success criteria.
But thats just my opinion. But... It does frustrate me as a frequent user of WCAG.

[patrickhlauke]

for what it's worth, I agree the order now is...slightly illogical

[kimviens]

Shawn made me think of another way to phrase this.

I rely on content structure to understand the information. How it is currently built make me think that the SC definition stems from the In Brief rather than the In Brief stemming from the SC definition.

Also, not everyone will need the In Brief section but everyone needs the SC definition.

From an educative point of view it makes sense to put the in brief first. But those documents are not only used for educative purposes. I do web audits. I refer back to these documents to refresh my understanding of the SCs.

I also point clients to these documents. When those clients look at the understanding documents they are coming from a desire to conform rather than exclusively educational purposes.

[yatil]

For further reference:

• WCAG 2.2 Understanding: Position of “In Brief“ sections #3910

[mbgower]

I open one of these pages to remind myself what is the normative text of the success criteria.

When those clients look at the understanding documents they are coming from a desire to conform rather than exclusively educational purposes.

There are multiple ways to view the normative text. First, the TR lists all the Success Criteria in succession. Anyone looking to cite the normative language can point to this. As well, the Quick Reference provides an even more condensed listing of the normative language.

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The In Brief material only appears in the informative Understanding documents. All the content in these documents is non-normative -- with the exception of the success criterion language itself, which is clearly identified as such.

From an educative point of view it makes sense to put the in brief first.

The Understanding documents intentionally lead with the simplified language of the In Briefs because research shows that many users visit the Understanding document because they do not understand the normative language. When these users immediately encounter the same language that they have already been confused by, some give up without even reading below the success criterion language.

From this perspective, the In Brief content provides immediate context for the following normative language. We have documented cases where users, after reviewing the 3 lines of Goal/What to Do/Why it's important, have a greater capacity to digest the sometimes impenetrable language of the SC.

[yatil]

research shows that many users visit the Understanding document because they do not understand the normative language.

1. Pointer to the research, please.
2. I don't know how the "In brief" section help with understanding the normative language. They are often so short, occasionally reductive, and frequently repetitive that they border on uselessness. Why not have just a short introductory sentence instead of this very strict list that takes a lot of real estate.

For my purposes the old order was perfect to send to clients as pointers to SCs and giving them the normative information at a glance without sending them into the middle of a looong document. And then there is additional information. Now they all think the "In brief" is what they should look at. The Understanding pages have become pretty useless to me as a destination for clients.

I think a fundamental change like this 15+ years after the initial release of the Understanding docs is bad. We'll now recreate the Understanding for the purposes of pointing to the normative text and also for embedding within an iFrame because W3C seems to be unable to fix this other regression, too.

This all takes time away from actually implementing accessibility. I can't see that there was actually a survey done for people who use these pages daily. The in brief, especially so prominently, makes this a resource for a different audience, and I'm not even sure who that audience is.

[yatil]

We have documented cases where users, after reviewing the 3 lines of Goal/What to Do/Why it's important, have a greater capacity to digest the sometimes impenetrable language of the SC.

Citation needed, although I don't doubt it. I also think that people are able to find the "in brief" section in the document and then re-read the success criterion.

[patrickhlauke]

I mean, we now have documented cases (here and elsewhere) of people being confused about why there's this unnatural split between the SC title (at the top), the normative SC wording, and in between this freeform/informal "in brief". In my head, the SC title and text are kind of a unit, so it feels odd to break them apart...

[kimviens]

I am not sure if this document is really fully an educational document.
I understand that the Understanding document is non-normative but it is a crucial document for users looking to conform. The document acts like a commonly accepted interpretation of the success criteria endorsed by W3C. I may quote the Understanding document "Intent" section if I am in agreement with its interpretation because W3C's opinion has more weight than mine. If I dont agree however, well you will find me in your github issues...

This is such a small detail to have the "In Brief" before or after the "SC", its actually pretty funny that we are having this conversation. I think the reason why people care is because WCAG is a standard that is becoming almost law. The content will be referred to because it was published by the W3C therefore giving priority to an oversimplified summary makes it look like the W3C puts more importance to that than the very important normative text that everything else stems from.

The attention to this is likely because the WCAG is increasingly seen as a standard with almost legal weight. Since the content is published by the W3C, prioritizing a simple summary could suggest that it's more important than the foundational SC text, which everything on this page stems from.

Also, the "Page Contents" appear beforehand in the reading order so users would know that there is an "In Brief" after the "Success Criterion" if that order is made.

In the end, WCAG may say that the understanding documents are "Informative explanations, not required to meet WCAG" but I feel like its like a financial expert online saying "this is not financial advice" and then giving financial advice. Its just to remove liability but the reality is that we will refer to these documents to learn how to conform.

That is just my opinion though, this comment is non-normative.

[fstrr]

The new content order doesn't make sense. The SC number, name, title, and level is a chunk of content should directly precede the normative SC text. Splitting those two chunks up with a block of descriptive content that describes the goal, what to do, and why it's important breaks the flow of two pieces of content that very much should be next to each other.

Moving the In Brief section under the SC text would be fine—it still has prominence by being near the top of the content, but it's not splitting up the two most important chunks of content that have a direct relationship with each other.

The Understanding documents intentionally lead with the simplified language of the In Briefs because research shows that many users visit the Understanding document because they do not understand the normative language.

The In Brief content doesn't clarify the normative SC content though. The SC text is a more complicated What To Do and maybe implicitly the Goal, but it doesn't cover Why It's Important. This "clarifying" content should come after the normative text, because its current position is saying: "this is what the complicated wording, that you've not read yet, means". This makes no sense to me—you don't clarify content before the content.

Also:

1. how many users is "many"?
2. can we see the research?

[yatil]

So… can we see the research for this change? If there is none, or it’s just an arbitrary change, then that’s fine, too. Also, please let us know if this is simply the way it is now, and we should put our efforts somewhere else.

[kimviens]

If you find the In Brief annoying, here is how you can stop it from pushing down the content:

1. Use Stylus
2. Paste the following code into a new stylesheet: @-moz-document url-prefix("https://www.w3.org/WAI/WCAG22/Understanding") { #brief { display: none; } }

You can simply uncheck the checkbox in Stylus if you want to show the In Brief again.
If this is sufficient as a solution to this issue, feel free to close this issue.

[yatil]

It’s now almost a month since we asked about a link to the research. I would really like to help find a way to address this issue in a way that works for all needs, but it is tough to do if we are not provided the research on user needs that factored into the decision.

(Mentioning, by the way, that I’m a user whose needs are not met by the current presentation.)

[shawna-slh]

@kviens Thank you for your feedback as a frequent user of WCAG, and your input that from an educative point of view it makes sense to put the in brief first.

Apologies for my delay in responding.

Summary: Main reasons for the decision to put the In Briefs before the SC wording include:

1. To help those new to the SC understand the basic issue and the SC wording more easily.
2. To focus on disabled peoples' user experiences, rather than just conformance.

For 1, I don't know of formal studies with published results*. I do know of anecdotal evidence that supports leading with the In Briefs from several different Education and Outreach Working Group (EOWG) participants and Accessibility Guidelines Working Group participants in their work helping others understand WCAG SCs.

For many SCs, the SC wording is complex and difficult to understand. When readers started with the SC wording, they were confused and frustrated. When readers started with the In Brief information, they were able to get the general idea, and then the SC wording was easier to parse and understand.

In design decisions such as this, there is a trade-off between making a design work better for frequent users or better for new users. In this case, EOWG and AG WG participants decided it was more important to help new users understand the basics of the SC and users' needs, before getting mired in the SC wording. Frequent users who don't need the In Brief info can skip it.

Those contributing to this update did carefully consider design options of the In Brief and SC, including visual design and heading structure. The intent was to help readers get to what is most useful to them and skip what is not.

For 2, WAI has been increasing efforts to put more focus on disabled peoples' lived experiences with accessibility barriers, rather than just conformance to WCAG. Perhaps all those commenting on this issue agree with that point?

(EOWG also wanted to include in the Understanding docs the persona quotes that are in What's New in WCAG 2.2. Some in AG supported adding those to the Benefits section; however, that hasn't bubbled to the top of priorities yet.)

[*] Usability studies, including A/B testing, would be nice to gather data on this issue. However, that has not been a priority over other work for anyone that I know of.

feel free to close this issue

Thanks. Done. (and others can re-open if they are compelled to do so)

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(As an aside, for my brain, 'What to do' and ' Why it's important' is all that's needed. I advocated against also including 'Goal', as I felt it unnecessary and a bit redundant. However, others wanted 'Goal' and I chose not to expend energy to gather data from user studies to provide evidence for or against that. We didn't include 'Goal' in What's New in WCAG 2.2)

[patrickhlauke]

I'm still not convinced by the arguments here. As I said above (and it seems the case for many others) "the SC title and text are kind of a unit, so it feels odd to break them apart". but there's bigger fish to fry / more fundamental problems to address...

[shawna-slh]

ah, I have an idea! I'm going to check with colleagues first on implementation so I don't annoy them ;)

[kimviens]

For 2, WAI has been increasing efforts to put more focus on disabled peoples' lived experiences with accessibility barriers, rather than just conformance to WCAG. Perhaps all those commenting on this issue agree with that point?

I found this to be an interesting point @shawna-slh. Unfortunately, when W3C publishes a document about understanding WCAG, a standard. Those documents will be used as one of the most reliable documents for conformance.

Documents like Images Tutorial are far enough removed that I feel those can focus on people's experiences, best practices, etc. But the reason I wanted to stress about this is because I hope that the WCAG working group keeps in mind that they are influencing conformance so I hope that they dont start just completely ignoring that piece just because the text is non-normative. These documents are also the result of fixes to the understanding documents stemming from the results of web auditors, all that with the purpose to better the online experience of people with disabilities.

[yatil]

I would have less of a problem with the “in briefs” if they were better. Removing the goals and compacting them to a sentence would be a great change. They feel awfully redundant and take up a lot of space. They are also not consistent, sometimes reference exceptions as “what to do”, which is not really what an exception is.

That said,

To help those new to the SC understand the basic issue and the SC wording more easily.

I am still unconvinced that new to SC understand the basic issue and wording better because it is first in the order on the page, especially as the “in brief” often uses different, but similar jargony wording as the SC text and never explains any of the wording of the SC itself.

I wrote a Mastodon Thread where I outline a few practical considerations.

(I would reopen this issue, but it’s not allowed to us mere mortals.)

[yatil]

In design decisions such as this, there is a trade-off between making a design work better for frequent users or better for new users. In this case, EOWG and AG WG participants decided it was more important to help new users understand the basics of the SC and users' needs, before getting mired in the SC wording. Frequent users who don't need the In Brief info can skip it.

I have regularly clients that come to me with questions and misunderstandings of the “in brief” because they fail to understand that the “in brief” is non-normative text (technically, all text in the understanding is non-normative). They think that this must be the most important information on the page and that other information on the page explains the “in brief”.

These are mostly new-to-wcag people that are sent there. I have had multiple instances where I had to explain what is important on the page, since the design change. The overhead makes me consider avoiding links to Understanding at all.

[yatil]

Users in the web accessibility slack are sharing user styles to hide the “In Brief” sections: https://web-a11y.slack.com/archives/C7KTV5CBA/p1725634643014319

Edit, 9 hours later: turns out that was a repost of the above stylus code.

(Again, would love to reopen, but I'm not allowed to do so.)

[fstrr]

@yatil re-opening for you.