Accessibility Test Cases

Product guide

Rights and attribution

Guidance on Rights and attribution for using the Accessibility Test Cases template library, package boundaries and evidence workflow.

Current status

All 98 registered technical sources have an internal, evidence-linked disposition for the product use recorded in Source/source-rights.json. The register has not been independently verified. It is not blanket permission for future copying, legal clearance or product-level commercial release approval.

The current dispositions are:

  • 72 W3C and WAI sources: reference and limited supporting-material use under the W3C Document License 2023, with source, copyright, document-status, modification and non-endorsement conditions;
  • Matterhorn Protocol 1.1: commercial sharing and adaptation under CC BY 4.0, with attribution and change indication;
  • one GOV.UK source: commercial reuse under the Open Government Licence v3.0, with attribution and licence exclusions;
  • two ISO publications: dated reference by number and title only; no ISO text is copied or distributed, and normative testing requires separately licensed access;
  • 22 vendor or other publications: product identification, bibliographic reference or independently authored operational guidance only; manuals, screenshots, logos and substantive copied passages are not distributed.

Required notices are published in THIRD-PARTY-NOTICES.md and third-party-notices.html. The register contains 98 of 98 current records, 98 current-use dispositions, zero unresolved technical-source dispositions and zero open high-risk technical-source findings.

Original-work ownership remains unresolved. Repository history shows one recorded Git author across all 51 current commits, but the author email uses a corporate domain. Git history does not establish whether the work was created independently, in the course of employment, or under an assignment. The repository therefore remains commercial_legal_status: not_cleared until the rights owner records the missing ownership facts and authority evidence.

What the internal source status means

For external sources, the internal status means the recorded product use was compared with the identified licence or reference basis, local source use was inventoried, required conditions were encoded, and notices were generated from the same register. It is a project workflow result, not an independent or legal verification.

It does not mean:

  • permission to copy additional source text, tables, screenshots, logos, standards content or other assets;
  • ownership of the repository's original procedure text or code;
  • approval of customer terms, pricing, support commitments or a paid release;
  • confirmation that a procedure was executed against a product;
  • accessibility conformance, certification or publisher endorsement.

A changed use reopens the applicable source record automatically. An unresolved, disputed or prohibited use requires permission, replacement, removal or qualified legal review. A separate lawyer is not required merely because an official source is cited and its recorded use is already resolved by the evidence.

Wording review evidence

The local wording scanner accounts for all 49 registered-title candidates and finds no long quotation requiring review. The external comparison in reports/source-text-comparison-2026-08-27.json compares the catalogue with 844 files from the official W3C WCAG repository at commit 18c50702ae94b25e6ed280d8fe74c1c7a2b4a77c, using a minimum of 10 contiguous normalised words.

It records 35 matching occurrences, seven unique matching spans and a longest match of 18 words. The report stores hashes and paths instead of copying the source passages. These limited matches are covered by the recorded W3C notice and licence conditions. The comparison does not prove originality, non-infringement or source completeness.

Machine-readable register

Each accessibility-source-rights.v1 record includes:

  • the exact registered title, publisher, URL and publication status or date;
  • hashes of the source-registry record and procedures using it;
  • the recorded product use and completed wording-derivation review;
  • rights-holder evidence where relevant to the disposition;
  • a recorded licence or an explicit reference-only basis;
  • commercial-use, attribution, modification and redistribution conditions;
  • the official evidence URLs and the local wording-review reports;
  • whether a separate legal review is required for that source use;
  • an integrity hash.

Commands

Check register coverage, current dispositions, public notices and JSON Schema conformance:

npm run rights:check
npm run check:rights-schema
npm run rights:check-notices

Regenerate or check the local title and quotation review:

npm run rights:scan
npm run rights:check-wording

Re-run the external comparison against an authorised checkout of the official W3C WCAG repository:

python3 Source/source_text_review.py \
  --external-root /path/to/wcag \
  --external-revision 18c50702ae94b25e6ed280d8fe74c1c7a2b4a77c \
  --report reports/source-text-comparison-2026-08-27.json \
  --check

The external checkout path is supplied at runtime and is never stored in repository artifacts.

The full commercial rights gate remains fail-closed:

npm run verify:commercial-rights

That command now passes the 98 technical-source records and fails only at the remaining product-level ownership, authorised ownership-decision and commercial-status checks.

Remaining ownership work

The rights owner must record evidence answering these factual questions:

1. Was the original code and procedure text created independently, in the course of employment, for a client, or under another written assignment? 2. If employment or commissioned work was involved, who owns the relevant rights under the contract and applicable law? 3. Does the person or entity approving commercial release have authority to license the work? 4. Are any contributions missing from the Git history or credited under another identity?

If the answers are clear and supported, the authorised rights owner can complete the ownership decision. Obtain qualified legal advice if the employment, assignment or licensing facts are unclear or disputed. Do not populate ownership evidence from assumptions, a Git email address or an automated classification.