Secondary Requirements failed examples disclaimer placement

[bruce-usab]

I submit that the Secondary Requirements failed examples disclaimer should be moved into the paragraph preceding any listing of examples. It begs the question as to which failed examples might be problematic.

The concluding sentence on Secondary Requirements may warn that

Some of the failed examples may satisfy this success criterion.

See Scenario 2: the rule is stricter than a requirement, Example 7 and Example 8.

Those read fine, and as examples in context of the ACT Rules Format, are perfectly sensible.

When this disclaimer appears in the context of an individual rule, it is needlessly alarming and would seem to put work on the reader to sort out which failed examples the disclaimer might apply to.

This came to my attention with ACT Rules PR #334. See Secondary Requirements in preview, emphasis added.

This rule is related to the following accessibility requirements, but was not designed to test this requirements directly. These secondary requirements can either be stricter than the rule requires, or may be satisfied in ways not tested by the rule:

• 1.3.1 Info and Relationships (Level A): This success criterion is less strict than this rule. This is because browsers and assistive technologies will often fall back on a non-standard default value, which may be sufficient. Some of the failed examples may satisfy this success criterion.
• 4.1.2 Name, Role, Value (Level A): This success criterion is less strict than this rule. This is because browsers and assistive technologies will often fall back on a non-standard default value, which may be sufficient. Some of the failed examples may satisfy this success criterion.

I submit that the disclaimer would be better placed in the leading paragraph rather than on an SC-by-SC basis. For example:

This rule is related to the following accessibility requirements, but was not designed to test this requirements directly. These secondary requirements can either be stricter than the rule requires, or may be satisfied in ways not tested by the rule. Some of the failed examples may satisfy these success criteria.:

• 1.3.1 Info and Relationships (Level A): This success criterion is less strict than this rule. This is because browsers and assistive technologies will often fall back on a non-standard default value, which may be sufficient.
• 4.1.2 Name, Role, Value (Level A): This success criterion is less strict than this rule. This is because browsers and assistive technologies will often fall back on a non-standard default value, which may be sufficient.