Web and Software: April 18

Miscellaneous

• Minutes approved from April 11, 2007.
• Calendar: Next week's meeting – Andi will be in Norway. Need to see if Curtis can chair next meeting or cancel.
• Wiki site updates – moved all the meeting minute links off the main page. Will add topics covered for each meeting.
• 2nd draft deliverable due today.
  • Some general recommendations need to be added at the end of the report. Send any concerns or comments to the mailing list. End of June another draft will be sent.

Review of action items

1. ONGOING: Gregg Vanderheiden to do some research with the low vision community to see what they want with regard to color and contrast. Gregg is working with Lighthouse exploring the contrast issue. Developing and refining method of defining minimum contrast between text and background. Doing this for WCAG work and will share back with this group. Will post to this group when ready.
2. IN PROCESS: Gregg Vanderheiden, Curtis Chong, Sean Hayes, Don Barrett, Earl Johnson to continue to refine the keyboard proposal for the Web requirements. Need to determine what it is reasonable to ask someone to do and then work on the wording for it. Sean Hayes reported that the keyboard proposal for Web requirements is close to a solution and they would have something posted soon for discussion on the mailing list. - They are close, but not finalized.
3. Katie Haritos-Shea to develop a proposal for authoring tools requirements and a set of Q&As based on the W3C Authoring Tools Accessibility Guidelines. Should have this completed by this week. Andi to try to get ideas from Katie so that they can be considered with Allen's proposal. - Item may possibly “closed.” With information provided.
4. IN PROCESS: Jim Allan has formulated the appropriate W3C copyright notice and is awaiting approval, then it will be added to all wiki pages that quote W3C provisions. Jim redrafted it and Judy needs to edit it. She will add the updates to the wiki pages. - Judy will try to do the language today and since its related to the deliverable she will also send it directly to Andi.
5. IN PROCESS: Allen Hoffman will work on language and platform issues as a starting point for applets and plugins. Discussion started on the mailing list.
6. ON HOLD: Andi Snow-Weaver will update the cognitive proposal for compatibility with assistive technologies to address Peter Korn’s concerns, but this can not be closed until the API requirements are done. In addition, regulatory language will be added.
7. Judy Brewer will get updated langauge from SMIL on captions and audio descriptions and Andi will get info on WCAG 2.0 - Information sent to Andi, has language from 2 documents. See if terminology matches what we are using in 508. Judy will put on the mailing list.
8. Peter Korn & Allen Hoffman to work through proposed language for provision 3 of the content proposal.- They are close to a conclusion. Peter made a proposal and Allen agrees with it. Feel that provision 3 may not be needed. When you can encode color for text in document format then you can encode it. This is redundant. Recommendation to remove the provision. - No objections, provision 3 will be removed.
9. Peter Korn to suggest an alternative for "2 dimensional display of information" language n provision 4 of the content proposal. - Suggestion, rather then calling out multi column or text that we must indicate a reading order. Just say indicate a reading order. Discussed provision and decided to propose the wording and allow time for discussion. - Peter will add to Content section of the wiki for discussion.
10. CLOSED: Andi Snow-Weaver will revise provision 5 and 6 of the content proposal. See updated language on the content format proposal page. - Sean suggested that when you support data tables it does not imply columns and rows. We need support for all columns, rows and tables. Need distinction called out in 6. - OK to add column and row language to today’s draft.
11. CLOSED: Andi Snow-Weaver to find an appropriate place to store provision 10 until we get a better definition. The provision is at the bottem of the content format proposal page.
12. Allen Hoffman will sync provision 2 with AV group definition by next week. - Has not had time to get this done. It will be next week.
13. Gregg Vanderheiden will rewrite 1194.22(j), so it is easier to understand.

Technical Topics

Web: Harmonization with WCAG 2.0

• Proposal
• Discussion beginning with 22 (k)

22(k)

• Suggestion to include something related to meeting the facilitation requirements. Why do we need 2 pages when one does all the functionality?
• Language of text only discussion which implies text only with no semantics. Does not have to be text only just an accessibile alternative.
• If an alternative version has to be kept current. How do you assess the requirement?
• It's an alternative in the rare event that full functionality can’t be achieved using a single page…” If we keep it, make a strong point it should be used rarely. Text only may be out moded.
• If we leave it out and want it to be rare. Then we should not suggest it and not make it explicit. If it is not accessible it will not comply.
• Recommendation to removed it. If you can’t meet the provision of the standard.
• In the past we allowed text only page, but there is no exception to inaccessible content. We need to leave something in about why its not there if we remove it.
• Consensus is to remove text only provisions and the Access Board will describe the changes in 508 and we are accepting the new provision.

22(l)

• Provision is not needed WCAG 2.0 applies to this. When discussed on list there was resistence to removing it.
• Does not see it being needed as noted on wiki. After months have passed evolution in thinking about what 2.0 covers. Do we need it and can we remove it?
• Provision will remain in for the draft, and we will re-open the discussion, and make a different recommendation later.
• Andi will put a note on the mailing list.

22(n)

• One of the things is that we are not consistent in the use of language around AT throughout all of the technical provisions. "… that can be read by AT." "using AT", "supports AT", "available to user agent including AT." We need one language that can be reused as applicable.
• Action item:Andi will go back through and look for inconsistent language.
• Allen will pass that along to editorial group also.
• Recommendation to remove this provision. Current one has a testability issue.
• No objections to removing this requirement. Andi will remove it from the draft.

22(o)

• Concern about using the word mechanism. Its not really a mechanism rather, a use of code to create a mechanism.
• WCAG 2.0 considers this a sufficient technique to meet the check point. WCAG added a definition for mechanism. We need to include the terminology, so the definition is fully captured.

22 (q)

• Two provisions listed are not in WCAG 2.0, but do we think they need to be in the Web section of 508?
• Suggestion that if we keep them they should be part of the scripting requirements that were removed.
• Should we include language or replicate it? These are things that could happen in a user-agent when scripting is taking place. May be a way to relate the two pieces.
• Leaving the draft as is, and will kick off a mailing list discussion on the 2 topics. It does come into play with scripting and other HTML … as well.

Web: Valid and Well-Formed code

• The evidence behind the new proposal from WCAG 2.0 is a definitive listing related to improper nesting effects the end users. Another way to put in valid code related to all the issue that comes up. This is redundant, adding additional over head and does not feel belong on this standard.
• The thought was that the user agent has to go into error correction. Related to error correction, it would be interesting to hear from browser vendors. Infinite multiple combinations. Browser interpretation is not always consistent.
• Unfortunately we don’t have a complete set of test cases, but are trying to cover the main problems where user agents come up with different models and experience. Poor nesting is a problem due to error correcting model. We had to come up with a criterion that we could do briefly and tried not to include anything that is out of scope. Would appreciate feed back.
• Concern remains about validy for WCAG 2. There is not enough information to convince that this is necessary. Tightly focused to HTML and other issues take care of this elsewhere.
• Wording was intended to be specific to Markup language. Did not include PDF and Flash. They were not needed in WCAG.
• No in agreement to add requirement. Will leave it off for now.

API Requirements

• Proposal
• Discussion
• Recommendation to rename it,”AT IT interoperability requirements” or “Programmatic exposure of information”
• We had desktop software in mind when we wrote this proposal. The desktop world is clearly more mature. We should document our assumptions. Technology is converging and the current break down may not be around much longer. There could be a problem in our approach. Running into the problem that sometimes it will or will not apply across platforms. If we apply this outside of the desktop world we should have explicit timelines.
• Access Board is not looking to take away any standards that are currently there. Subpart A directs the reader to apply all applicable provisions. It does not indicate categories or put language in provisions for specific devices. But developers tend to only look at the category that they think applies to them.
• But the computer is now a telephone device. And almost every telephone has an OS. Do they all need to comply with SW and OS requirements. Problem for developers and procurement. Lots of questions on what needs to apply.
• General recommendation is for better guidance provided in Subpart A with regard to applicability.
• Subpart A would say what is applicable and what isn’t. 1194.21 is applicable to SW application and operating systems. We have 1194.23 that talks about telecommunications.
• Need to consider where technologies will be. Standards won’t be refreshed for another 5 or 6 years. Lots of cross over products out now that were not out there when the standards were originally written.
• No objections to putting it in the draft today.

New Action items:

• Andi will go back through and look for inconsistent language related to AT.

Attendees:

1. Jim Allan (W3C)
2. Andi Snow-Weaver - IBM
3. Greg Fields, RIM
4. Dana Louise Simberkoff-HiSoftware
5. Michael Cooper, W3C
6. Shannon Rapuano - IBM
7. Andrew Kirkpatrick (Adobe)
8. Judy Brewer (W3C/WAI)
9. Michael Cooper, W3C
10. Jamie Smith, FL Blind
11. Eric Damery
12. Jessica Brodey (ATIA)
13. Kate Walser (SRA)
14. Jim Elekes (Access Board)
15. Terry Weaver - gsa
16. Peter Korn – Sun Microsystems
17. Sharon Snider- IBM
18. Allen Hoffman
19. Sean Hayes, Microsoft
20. Tom Brett, US Office of Personnel Management
21. Bruce Bailey (Access Board)
22. Carl Schmidt