Conformance Reporting Requirements
There are 66 Test Conditions for evaluation in this test process. Each Test Condition must have a test result for testing to be considered complete.
The 41 web requirements covered in this test process are 38 WCAG 2.0 Level A and AA Success Criteria and 3 Section 508 requirements. Each Test Condition is mapped to a web requirement (see Appendix A). Some web requirement outcomes are determined by more than one Test Condition.
While it is important to report the results for each Test Condition, it is also important to report the results for each web requirement. DHS has developed the Accessibility Conformance Reporting Tool (ACRT) to collect tester results and generate a test report that includes results for each Test Condition, supporting screenshots and the results for all web requirements.
Test outcomes or results are the primary output from conducting Section 508 conformance testing. Trusted Tester results may have multiple audiences including developers, purchasers, internal IT management personnel, and IT project managers. Each audience has different uses for Trusted Tester results so a sufficient set of information must be included to support all audiences to the extent possible. Given that this Trusted Tester process provides a set of evaluations which can be used to determine WCAG 2.0 Level A and AA conformance, Trusted Tester results may also be used outside the U.S. Federal Section 508 conformance scope. However, such use, while not incompatible with the Trusted Tester process, is not the primary purpose of this document.
One of the primary objectives of the Section 508 law is to promote improved IT accessibility based on selection of “more accessible” over “less accessible” ICT over time by Federal agencies. Consistent, well documented use of the Accessibility Conformance Report (ACR) (update to the VPAT) format from the IT Industry Council (ITI) supports evaluating overall conformance to make such selections and therefore supports the primary objective of the Section 508 law. Trusted Tester results must be provided at minimum following the Accessibility Conformance Report format from the IT Industry consortium. However, the ACR format must be supplemented with specific Trusted Tester test outcomes, which must then be aggregated to determine the “supported” and “not supported” outcomes for individual WCAG Success Criteria results.
Each ACR must provide:
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Clear identification of the test process used to return conformance results.
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Clear indication of the scope of testing.
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Clear documentation of the test environment(s).
In general, the possible outcomes for Test Conditions and web requirements are PASS, FAIL, DOES NOT APPLY, or NOT TESTED. Any results of FAIL should also include clear information identifying the location of the failure and, when feasible, clear information illustrating the content or information that resulted in the FAIL result. When multiple instances of the same failure are found, they may be flagged as global or included individually within test results.
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