Web and Software:December 6

Minutes and Action Items

• Minutes from November 29, 2006 approved.
• Review of action items from November 29th

1. IN PROCESS: Judy Brewer to send requirements for W3C copyright notices. WCAG working group is documenting how to reference WCAG standards.
2. Andi to check with Access Board staff to confirm that we can quote provisions in other standards.
3. Unassigned: Need a presentation on where graphical applications are going.
4. IN PROCESS: Shannon Rapuano to post information on the wiki on color inheritance in Windows, including the application workspace. Sueann Nichols has started a page on inheriting system settings.
5. Sean Hayes to write a proposal for a default minimum contrast.
6. ONGOING: Gregg Vanderheiden to do some research with the low vision community to see what they want with regard to color and contrast.
7. Randy Marsden to poll AT vendors to determine if 21(e) (consistent labeling of bitmap images) is still necessary for AT interoperability. Jessica Brodey will take this action item.
8. IN PROCESS: Peter Korn and Andrew Kirkpatrick to develop a proposal of the minimum set of accessibility information that user interface elements must provide to AT. Additionally, provide example scenarios (e.g. a form on a web page) and describe the information they must provide and how it meets AT needs. Luke Kowalski to review early draft.
9. COMPLETE: Jim Thatcher and Earl Johnson to look for a mapping from 1194.22 to WCAG 2.0 or create one. A draft mapping Section 508 Software (1194.21) to WCAG 2.0 is available here: http://jimthatcher.com/teitac/508softwaretoWCAG20.htm. Thank you Bruce Bailey for doing most of the work.

Discussion of Group D provisions

22(g) and 22(h)

• In general, think that 508 should describe "what" to do, not "how" to do it and harmonization with WCAG 1.3.1 is therefore a good idea; 22(g) and 22(h) would be 2 of several sufficient techniques that are used to accomplish the requirement.
• Concern expressed that moving 22(g) and 22(h) to techniques would soften the requirement - one idea is to include them as examples in the standard itself.
• Concern expressed that WCAG 2.0 is not finished yet so the language of 1.3.1 may change. Also concern expressed that the amount of information for WCAG 2.0 is huge - need to keep 508 simple.

22(i)

• The issue of non-visible frames can perhaps be addressed with good accessibility APIs.
• Title issues brought up - some feel that the title of the "framed" document is what is important to the user, not the titles in the frame element in the "framing" document. (Michael Cooper can explain this in more detail.)
• There are a lot of techniques needed to make frames accessible. Could harmonize with WCAG 2.0 and provide in sufficient techniques but we did not reach consensus to do this.

22(o)

• Skip links don't even work correctly in most browsers - they move the viewport but not the keyboard focus.
• Structural navigation is the right way to accomplish this if the technology supports it. Skip links can still be used as a sufficient technique but good structure is also a sufficient technique.
• If structure is all that is needed and that is required for WCAG 2.0 1.3.1, some question why WCAG 2.0 even has 2.4.1. Included to cover technologies that don't have structure that can be used for navigation.
• Real requirement is not to skip things that are "repeated" but to provide a means to efficiently navigate the content.
  • Screen readers are largely providing this support today. Most browsers do not even though UAAG requires user agents to provide a means for efficient navigation of the content.
• Concern that "provide mechanism" language is a loophole. Some could claim that the "mechanism" is provided if the user agent provides it but the content does not "fill in" the information that is needed in order for the mechanism to work. (Barbara Lybarger can describe this in more detail.) Perhaps language that requires the mechanism to be properly used or utilized would help here.
• In favor of user agents and ATs providing efficient keyboard navigation but this is not limited to repeated content. The requirement on content is to use structure.
  • There are requirements on the user agents to make this work well. Perhaps we need to pull in some things from UAAG into 508.

Other

• Question from subpart A subcommittee regarding prioritizing the requirements. Will kick off for discussion next week.
• Thanks to Allen Hoffman, DHS is providing a toll-free US number for future teleconferences. New number will be published early next week to the agenda page on the wiki and to the mailing list.

Attendees

1. Andi Snow-Weaver
2. Peter Korn, Sun Microsystems, Inc.
3. Blene Bekure (LMIT)
4. Tom Brett
5. Mike Fratkin - SSA
6. Jim Tobias
7. Shannon Rapuano - IBM
8. Katie Haritos-Shea
9. Rob Haverty, Microsoft
10. Rex Lint - ITAA
11. Jim Allan-W3C
12. Andrew Kirkpatrick - Adobe
13. Chuck Letourneau- Industry Canada
14. Michael Cooper, W3C
15. Jim Thatcher
16. Amy Chen - Oracle
17. Dana Simberkoff, HiSoftware
18. Barbara Lybarger, Mass. Office on Disability
19. Jessica Brodey - ATIA
20. Dewi Gani - SAP
21. Terry Weaver - GSA
22. Alex Li -SAP
23. Michael Burks
24. Terry Weaver - GSA
25. Ken Kipnes, Oracle
26. Earl Johnson - Sun Microsystems, Inc.
27. Curtis Chong - NFB
28. Eric Damery - Freedom Scientific