[QGIS-Developer] QGIS 508 / EEN 301 549 Accessibility Documentation - VPAT/WCAG

Thu Jun 2 08:11:03 PDT 2022

Hi Andreas,
Thank you for your reply.

The conformance testing should be for each major release where a new functionality or a change in workflows could make the software improved from an accessibility standpoint (& updating to the latest VPAT Template).  The results for a VPAT/WGAG would apply to both US Section 508 conformance and the EU's EN 301 549 standards.  So where/who does the testing shouldn't matter much.

I understand that the QGIS community and product development is open source and agile with contributors all over the globe.  My colleague Kurt Menke is now across the pond too.  As someone who is a limited end user of QGIS, working for our Federal Govt, responsible for putting together acquisition packages only, I'm not in a position to recommend either public or private sources of conformance testing.  My suggestion of a university program to assist in conformance testing was a possible avenue to consider, but I have no direct awareness of any particular university program, but a search did uncover this one<https://das.osu.edu/resources/category/accessibility-testing> (I figure that most CIS programs cover this topic).  Also, if the developer community had an interest, testing can be done in-house, (I found a post<https://lists.osgeo.org/pipermail/qgis-community-team/2013-March/002556.html> from David Seager who had started this in 2013, but wasn't able to track him down to find out the status).

I'm open to speaking with the US based developers/board as well to assist in furthering the conversation.

Here is a link to an organization that discusses the EN 301 549<https://www.deque.com/en-301-549-compliance/> standard (couldn't find a governmental site) and our GSA Accessibility Page<https://www.section508.gov/sell/> for understanding what the reports are and the testing process.

I hope this helps.  Thank you again for reaching out and I look forward to further dialogue to add another layer of completeness to one of the finest open-source geospatial application in this ecosystem.

Best regards,

Robert
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From: Andreas Neumann <andreas at qgis.org>
Sent: Thursday, June 2, 2022 4:02 AM
To: Thomas, Robert - FS <robert.thomas at usda.gov>
Cc: qgis-developer at lists.osgeo.org; qgis-user at lists.osgeo.org; QGIS PSC List <psc at qgis.org>
Subject: Re: [QGIS-Developer] QGIS 508 / EEN 301 549 Accessibility Documentation - VPAT/WCAG

Dear Thomas,

The QGIS community and PSC would certainly welcome such an initiative. However, no-one on the PSC/board is based in the US.

Is that something that has to be renewed for every release? Perhaps it would be done only for LTR versions?

If you know a university institute based in the US that could work on this, please put us in touch !

Also: what would / should happen in your opinion if the work on the conformance document would reveal major issues with QGIS in the accessibility respect? We are largely dependent on upstream libraries (mainly Qt in our example) - so we are basically inheriting all of the strengths and weaknesses of Qt ...

Also, it might be worth a discussion with the US QGIS user group - such conformance documents are typically only valid in one single country - so it would be kind of the responsibility of a local user group to work on such documents. Of course the international project can support this effort - but the initiative should primarily come from the country user group that wants to get such a conformance document for their country.

Thank you for your reply,
Andreas

On Tue, 31 May 2022 at 18:05, Thomas, Robert - FS via QGIS-Developer <qgis-developer at lists.osgeo.org<mailto:qgis-developer at lists.osgeo.org>> wrote:
Hi QGIS Community,
A number of years ago, there was an effort to complete the Section 508/EEN 301 549 Accessibility Conformance documentation (i.e. Voluntary Product Accessibility Template (VPAT) and Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG)) for QGIS; is there a part of the developer/tech support community interested in completing these?

My thought is if there may be some Computer Science or Geo students where their program covers testing and conformance as a part of their developer program curriculum, then they could use QGIS testing and reporting as a part of a class project?  A long term relationship with that University could make regular updates sustainable.

There is lots of good information and resources, including the Template here<https://gcc02.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.section508.gov%2F&data=05%7C01%7C%7C578868b086394e120e6b08da447ef3cf%7Ced5b36e701ee4ebc867ee03cfa0d4697%7C0%7C0%7C637897609289715874%7CUnknown%7CTWFpbGZsb3d8eyJWIjoiMC4wLjAwMDAiLCJQIjoiV2luMzIiLCJBTiI6Ik1haWwiLCJXVCI6Mn0%3D%7C3000%7C%7C%7C&sdata=MghwWahMOqCzXuBR5YT%2FGua1mZR8Rgys%2B5nv1%2F%2BhiE8%3D&reserved=0> < Home | Section508.gov<https://gcc02.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.section508.gov%2F&data=05%7C01%7C%7C578868b086394e120e6b08da447ef3cf%7Ced5b36e701ee4ebc867ee03cfa0d4697%7C0%7C0%7C637897609289715874%7CUnknown%7CTWFpbGZsb3d8eyJWIjoiMC4wLjAwMDAiLCJQIjoiV2luMzIiLCJBTiI6Ik1haWwiLCJXVCI6Mn0%3D%7C3000%7C%7C%7C&sdata=MghwWahMOqCzXuBR5YT%2FGua1mZR8Rgys%2B5nv1%2F%2BhiE8%3D&reserved=0>>.  The last time I posted, the message was held up by moderator approval, hopefully this time my message can reach you all.

Having compliance reports adds to QGIS and other open source software increased legitimacy and would allow the use by more governmental organization that need to meet their procurement requirements.  Other thoughts, ideals or volunteers to lead a working group??  Thanks for the consideration.

Best regards,

Robert
[Forest Service Shield]
Robert E Thomas, GISP
Geospatial IT Specialist
US Forest Service
WO-CIO-MSS-Geospatial Branch
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Remote
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