HFP
Subcommittee Teleconference
Friday, November 9, 2006
Participants:
Alice Miller, Allan Eustis, Sharon Laskowski, Tricia Mason, Wendy Havens,
Whitney Quesenbery
Agenda:
a) TGDC
and EAC updates from Allan Eustis
b) Sharon Laskowski will go over items that will be part of the HFP
presentation at the TGDC December meeting. And, the most current VVSG07
HFP. A nicely formatted version of this will be what is distributed
to the TGDC for the meeting.
c) Sharon Laskowski will summarize status of current research in more
detail.
Administrative
Updates:
- Allan:
Reminder to all about reservations for traveling to the TGDC. All but
a few have made travel plans. Any questions or concerns should be directed
to Lucy Salah.
- Allan:
On Monday 11/13, our TGDC subcommittee chairs will teleconference in
to our monthly NIST/EAC meeting . It's a coordination effort to ensure
everyone is on the same page for the TGDC meeting.
TGDC
Presentation Summary:
- Sharon
sent around the latest VVSG which hasn't been formatted for word.
- Unless
anyone has anything specific about the draft, discussion will be on
the specific items suggested for the December meeting.
- HFP plans
to talk about the following items based on the VVSG07 Section 3, Usability
and Accessibility draft and related discussions. (Whitney had expressed
great concerns about making the document readable, that is expressing
things clearly and simply):
- We
added and/or rewrote material for a more readable document. Clarified
HAVA requirements and VVSG requirements. There has been discussion
about moving this as well up front to the introduction section.
- What
will the usability performance requirements and test methods look
like? Open issue. Not sure what the requirements will look like
because we're in the middle of the research. Detailed tasks out,
will get benchmark for error rate as a whole instead of detailed
analysis. Taken out specific function requirements to simplify.
Policy issue - how public should the test reports be? Especially
the performance benchmarks. Current thinking is Public Report to
include all but specific proprietary info. Plans to create test
report that is similar to the format of the ISO standard.
- Clarified
requirements for alternative languages in section 3.2.6 because
language in VVSG 05 ambiguous - no feedback from EAC, it is needed
here.
- Is
the TGDC satisfied with our treatment of marginal marks (new requirement
handed over from CRT)? 3.2.2.2 A marginal mark is one in a non-editable
interface which is not clearly countable as a vote or as a non-vote
- e.g., bubble half filled in. Each vendor must clarify what they
consider a marginal mark and what their tabulator can identify.
- Updated
the user interaction timing issues; there is new material. Section
3.2.5.1. We did email TGDC members who were previously interested,
so far no response.
- Consolidated
and clarified voter's choice issues (regarding under and over voting).
Same process to interested TGDC. System should allow corrections
before vote is cast.
- New
material on plain language and usability issues based on general
guidelines. Researching specific guidelines.
- Received
from David Baquis a small portion of an ISO standard draft. David
has also shown the VVSG work to Access Board for comment.
- New
section 3.2.8.1 that incorporated/consolidated usability for poll
workers and moved and clarified maintenance and safety to our section.
Whitney would like a statement about the importance that the documentation
be complete and usable (effectively) by the poll worker during the
operation of an election - make sure we have a statement about who
the documentation is for. Sharon will double check that this is
going into the user documentation section. (See Sharon's #10 discussion
item.) We plan to bring in a documentation expert for assistance.
- Tried
to clarify voter control of color, removed Appendix D because it
based on old guidance. Not happy with it, bring in a color expert
for advice. Sharon attended a conference in Baltimore about state
of the art color realization. Whitney: just make sure expert knows
about disabilities.
- Universal
usability. This could be controversial. Long term goal is a universal
design that addresses as many people with different capabilities
as possible in the general voting section. Example, some machines
allow you to adjust font size; this is just not a feature on the
"accessible" machines. Is there anything in the accessible
systems that should be moved into the general machine guidelines?
Think about things that might be a "should" in the general
section, and a "shall" in the accessible section.
- Research
is underway for plain language specific to voting--no results to
report yet. There's a glitch in the testing. Validation software
issues, we've made significant changes to our test ballot.
- Our
usability test protocol and benchmark efforts have not yet addressed
the ACC-VS. Work need to be done. If this is not going to make it
into VVSG 07, we need a white paper to outline the issues - something
that says this is the base and the modifications that need to go
into it.
- Research
is underway to develop usability performance benchmarks. How much
should we report? We do not have written material on the data collected.
We need larger population to benchmark and show repeatability. Next
step is starting now. There's more undetected errors out there than
be reported. Should this information be discussed at the TGDC meeting
since it is a public forum? Satisfaction surveys not useful as a
benchmark, because everyone thinks they voted correctly. Not a big
difference in timing between DREs and op scans. (Point of reference,
this is a public phone call.) Issues to mention some of the other
papers, which Whitney can do since she has reviewed them. We can
contact the researchers and ask for summaries. We can do a ballpark
presentation on the kind of error rates we're seeing. The satisfaction
and confidence survey data may play a part when looking at accessible
systems. Error rate is the benchmark we want to use.
- Heads
up: We need to start talking in terms of actual things to do in
regards to HFP requirements that overlap vis a vis security and
usability. Maybe user testing on different security methods proposed.
This is research that doesn't exist yet.
Next meeting
is Friday, November 17, 2006, at 11:00 a.m. ET.
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