[Post] 2023 Web Almanac style report on Web Accessibility

[thibaudcolas]

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Your idea

👋 long time reader, first time poster! I and @SaptakS are interested in publishing a 2023 version of the Accessibility chapter from the HTTP Archive’s Web Almanac. The Almanac is a data-driven survey of how the web is built, assessing websites via the HTTP Archive’s dataset of about 8M sites. The Accessibility chapter in particular looks into the prevalence of specific good and bad patterns in HTML and CSS.

We’re looking for a publication to write this for because the Web Almanac itself won’t be running in 2023, simply for logistics reasons on their side. We’ve discussed our intentions to publish an unofficial 2023 version of the chapter with the Almanac team directly, who are keen to support us (feedback on our plans, guidance on the dataset, access to the data, funding for data analysis costs). All we’re missing is a place to publish the report.

From my perspective, the A11Y Project feels like a great fit for this kind of reporting: well-established and authoritative in the web accessibility space.

Outline (optional)

The tentative outline would be as per the 2022 accessibility chapter. Most likely, as we start drafts there will be a few iterative changes.

Additional information (optional)

It’s worth noting both Saptak and I were heavily involved with the creation of the 2022 report, so have ample experience with the data as well as the writing style. And a clear understanding of the scale of the project.

Having read the contributing guidelines, I have a few concerns:

• Some of the A11Y Project content style guide seems geared towards short-and-snappy posts. The report we’re proposing here would be a rather long document, where the most important elements are the charts representing the data, which can require more technical language (in particular when describing statistics). I believe this can be worked out but this is worth flagging.
• The A11Y Project expects content to be provided under the Apache v2 license. It’s not immediately clear to me how the Apache v2 license applies to content (requires any re-publications to provide a copy of the license & copy right notice?), so my preference here would be to publish the content as a Creative Commons CC0 Public Domain dedication. If this is problematic for A11Y Project, then we can dual-license the content.

Terms

• [ ] I have read, and agree to follow this project's Contributing Guidelines
• [ ] I have read, and agree to follow this project's Content Style Guide
• [x] I have read, and agree to follow this project's Code of Conduct

[davatron5000]

Howdy! I'm a big fan of the Web Almanac and we'd love to host a report of that nature.

• Don't worry about the style guidelines. Some principles like "Don't use ableist language" would obviously still apply, but I agree this is a pretty different situation as well as there's prior art informing the content style and structure so don't feel compelled to stick to the reading level or things of that nature.
• I'm personally fine with CC0 for that piece. I think we clearly label that on the post. I'm not an expert, but it may need to be dual-licensed only because the post would exist in a repo that is Apache v2.

Hope that helps. What's your timeline for this report?

[thibaudcolas]

Excellent! 😌 We’ve not discussed a specific timeline yet. For me it’d be easier to do this between June and September, @SaptakS might have other plans.

[SaptakS]

Between June and September works for me as well.

[thibaudcolas]

Yay :) I’m not super clear on the process for this proposal – is there anything further I/we need to do or is this considered approved?

[thibaudcolas]

👋 just a quick update to say Saptak and I are about to get going with this, unless there’s any last-minute reservations. Our first step will be to gather and analyse the data the report is based on, once that’s done we can get going with the writing.