In this lesson you
- Told compliant from needs review from failed
- Read what Ockem Proof verified, and what your organization attested
- Saw what a certificate does not claim
Transcript
Three verdicts
What 'certified' means. When you tell someone a document is certified, you're making a claim. It helps to know exactly what that claim covers. It starts with the verdict. Every document in Proof carries one of three. You can see all three here, in the band at the top of the Corpus Assessment. Compliant means every check that applies has passed, or has been confirmed by a person. Needs review means nothing has failed, but a person still has to check something. That includes anything Proof couldn't check on its own, so nothing passes by default. Failed means at least one confirmed violation. That's a problem found in the file, not a judgment call. Here, five of your eight documents are compliant. Two failed, and one needs review. The red and amber dots mark those two groups. The number beside them, Escalated, isn't a verdict. It counts documents that need rebuilding, and the lesson on Home explains it. Why does the verdict matter? Because only a compliant document can be certified. Failed and Needs review both block approval. The sentence under the band says what that means for this library. Three of the eight documents don't yet meet the bar under Section 508 and the ADA.
Compliant, then certified
Compliant and certified aren't the same thing. Compliant describes the document's checks. Certified means a person with approval rights approved it, and Proof issued a certificate for that exact file. The Progress bar keeps the two apart. Ready to approve counts compliant documents that nobody has approved yet. Certified counts the ones that have a certificate. Here, all five compliant documents are certified, so nothing is waiting to be approved. Approving has its own lesson, Certifying a document.
What a certificate says
So what does a certificate actually say? Every certificate has a public page, and anyone can open it without an account. You can open one from the Evidence Register, by its certificate ID. Let's open the one for Patient Rights and Responsibilities. At the top is the verdict when the certificate was issued. WCAG 2.1 AA Compliant. That's the standard the certificate claims. The line under it counts the checks. Twenty-eight automated checks passed. One more was attested by Maple Ridge Community Health, which means a person there confirmed it. None is awaiting attestation, and none failed. Nineteen didn't apply, because this file has nothing for them to test. A document with no tables, for example, has no table checks.
Who stands behind what
Below the verdict, three columns say who stands behind each part of it. The first is what Ockem Proof tested. The second is what your organization confirmed. The third is what the certificate doesn't claim at all. First, Verified by Ockem Proof. Those twenty-eight automated checks ran against this exact file, and found no violations. That's the only part Ockem Proof asserts from its own testing. Second, Attested by Maple Ridge Community Health. That's your organization. These are the checks a machine can't decide, like whether a page reads in a sensible order. On this document, that was its reading order, which Jordan Lee confirmed. Ockem Proof relied on that confirmation. It didn't review it independently. So your organization answers for that part. If you'd rather Ockem's experts make those confirmations, that's Assured, which has its own lesson. Third, Not claimed. A certificate isn't a legal ruling under the ADA, Section 508, or any other law. It isn't a promise that no barrier exists. And it covers only the file version it names. Editing or re-exporting the file voids it.
Is it still current?
One more question matters when someone shows you a certificate. Is it still the current one? The line under the three columns answers it. Here, it says this is the most recent certificate on record for this document. If the document is changed and certified again, that line points to the newer certificate instead. Further down, Certificate details names the document version, and the file's fingerprint. Checking a file against that fingerprint has its own lesson, A certificate anyone can verify. Now you can say exactly what a certificate promises. What Proof tested, what your organization confirmed, and what it doesn't claim.
Recap
That's the end of the stakeholders track. Thanks for watching.
Maple Ridge Community Health, its documents and its people are fictional, made for these lessons.