Conformance requirements: Complete Processes spanning two sites

[detlevhfischer]

Conformance requirement 5.2.3 Complete Processes says:

When a Web page is one of a series of Web pages presenting a process (i.e., a sequence of steps that need to be completed in order to accomplish an activity), all Web pages in the process conform at the specified level or better.

This is the situation that gives me a headache:
The website of an opera house (let's call it OH) asks for an accessibility audit. The OH site lists events (opera performances). Each event has a button "TICKETS" that links to an event management company (let's call it EMC) that has created a kind of store for OH, the URL being a subdomain of EMC. So we don't have the case that some 3rd party process is embedded in OH (for example in an iframe) that would clearly be a part of the page, the inverse is true: activating "TICKETS" on OH takes you to EMC, the address having the format

https://OH.EMC.com/webshop/webticket/bestseatselect?eventId=16776 (example link, non-functional)

So the only part of the ticket booking process on the OH Site is the link to the EMC site - the rest of the process is hosted there entirely. I am trying to work out whether it is possible to determine conformance of a page of OH when a related critical process is delegated and hosted on an entirely different site that can for obvious reasons not be part of the same audit.

The OH logo reappears (differently) on OH.EMC.com, navigation and structure differ, the URL differs, etc., so it is possible to discern OH and EMC. Still, from a user perspective, the process starts on OH, seemlessly continues on OH.EMC.com and its generic purchase process, probably leading back to OH after payment.

Can OH.com (or, if we focus on WCAG's page-based conformance model, a page in OH.com that triggers a ticket purchase process taking the user to a different site, OH.EMC.com) be evaluated for conformance, without violating Conformance Requirement 5.2.3 OR simultaneously necessitating a conformance audit of a different site on which the OH site owner has no editorial control (and for which your auditor has no audit contract)?

One way to understand the initial quotation is that "Complete Processes" only applies to different pages of one and the same website that are part of a process. Processes that span several sites / domains would not fall under Conformance requirement 5.2.3. Is this view correct / shared by others?

[alastc]

My understanding of section 5.2.x is that conformance is based on pages (generally URLs), but if you are claiming for part of a process, then the whole process (set of URLs) must be included.

Therefore, even though you are only claiming for one domain, if you claim for pages which are part of a process spanning domains, you'd need to test pages on the other domain.

I beleive this was intentional, otherwise website owners could off-load parts of their responsibility to others and avoid working on accessibility,.

In practice you might agree with the website owner that the second domain is out of scope, however, it would be important to note that in any conformance claim, as any page where you can start the ticket-buying process couldn't then be part of the claim.

[detlevhfischer]

Would I be completely mistaken in assuming that the resounding silence on this topic (apart from your reply, @alastc ) indicates that we have a gap here between actual, professional auditing practice and the letter of WCAG?

[patrickhlauke]

i'd say @alastc comment pretty much sums up what I do in my audits as well (if something's outside of the site/set of URLs that we're being asked/paid to audit, we don't audit them directly, but may note in a conformance statement that it does not cover that particular flow)

[detlevhfischer]

@patrickhlauke The problem would not only be that flow but also all the pages having the big "Ticket" link starting the process. So if I understand @alastc correctly, any page where such a link occurs would not be conformant even if everything else on it conforms.

[patrickhlauke]

ah sorry, i see that wrinkle now in Alastair's reply. I would say that no, the page with the link to the third party would still be compliant (it links to the process, rather than being part of the process itself). Otherwise you might as well say the entire site is non-conformant even if it only had a link to the ticket site in general? that would be weird/odd.

(ah, the fun of trying to define wooly concepts like "what's a process? where does it start? where does it end?")

[detlevhfischer]

I wish there were a page "Understanding complete processes". The example given in the normative text is

An online store has a series of pages that are used to select and purchase products. All pages in the series from start to finish (checkout) conform in order for any page that is part of the process to conform.

Note select. The selection of what ticket you want to buy happens on the opera house site, not the ticket site, so the process there is already primed with information (what opera house, users' choice of opera). But for practical reasons I agree it makes sense to draw the line where @patrickhlauke draws it. I'd be curious what other people think.

[yatil]

I think those are two different processes. If I think about an online shop: “Add to cart” is a different process than checkout. Of course, if you directly go to the checkout when selecting a ticket, that is kinda part of the process. But I would say that on the page where you chose the ticket, that choice worked (even if you then end up in an inaccessible place). So no fail for the source site, but a major caveat.

I think this is an interesting intersection where process and 3rd-party content meet, probably a good place to add a conformance requirement in WCAG 2.3.

“If a process starts at the set of web pages and is completed through a 3rd party, the 3rd party needs to meet WCAG at the same level as the website for the website to claim conformance.”

[sweckenmann]

Do I understand it correctly (another situation):

If the checkout process takes place on the domain being tested, but the user is directed to a 3rd party provider only to enter the payment information, then this 3rd party page needs to meet WCAG at the same level as the website, for the website to claim conformance for the domain being tested.

[fstrr]

This issue is labelled as a discussion, so we’re moving this to Discussions. There doesn’t seem to be an update to make to the documentation, but if that changes, we can move it back to the issues list.