Web and Software: April 4

Miscellaneous

• Minutes March 28, 2007 approved.
• Project Plan

Review of action items

1. CLOSED: Rich Schwerdtfeger to give a presentation in mid-February on the future of Web and Software applications. Curtis to check with Jim Thatcher about providing a presentation on where graphical applications are going. Rich's presentation scheduled for April 4th. Jim Thatcher not participating in the subcommittee anymore. Live demo, screen sharing tool by adobe. Flash is needed.
2. 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.
3. 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.
4. 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.
5. 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.
6. 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.
7. IN PROCESS: Allen Hoffman will work on proposal for provisions to address authoring tools and user agents.
8. IN PROCESS: Jamie Smith will provide a concrete proposal for suppressing unneeded functions that can be discussed next week.
9. IN PROCESS: 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.

Technical Topics

Content

• Proposal to add a section defining the document encoding scheme requirements
• Discussion

General discussion

• Add a new section to 508 to address document content. Characteristics of what a document content format must have and not requirements for document authors to follow.
• It is the type of information that should be able to be encoded and the attributes that can be encoded, such as, images need descriptions.
• Proposal is attemping to define a minimum set of attributes that need to be in the specification to meet the format requirements. If tasks can’t be done, then programmers will not be abe to over come the problem on their own.
• Question discussed if document content should be a subset super set, or subsume everything in one to the other? The response was that the general format would be a super set of WCAG 2.0. WCAG is the guidelines that needs to be followed assuming they have the described characteristics.
• Its along the lines of describing a technology (a document format) that supports accessibility and could help resolve the problem in another discussion regarding tables and format on the web. People often misuse the tools, such as using tables for structure.
• Simple tables in word or Acrobat are not the problem. Problems with AT are in tables that have multiple levels of header cells or those that span multiple columns or rows of data cells, which are not dealt with yet by AT. A way to associate data cells with headers is important.

Provision 1:

• No comments or discussion, so provision accepted as worded.

Provision 2:

• This provisions could be changed to caption and audio descriptions and the definitions that are coming out of that group.
• Recommendation to look at what SMIL and WAI is doing to address this.
• Most undated versions synchronize multimedia language. Should discuss with Larry Goldeburg or Jeff Freed (AV group). Timed-text has also been looking at this.
• Action: Judy will get updated langauge to sub-committee. WCAG 2 should have some of the information included.
• WCAG states what the technology should or would allow, there is no comment about SMIL in WCAG. The place to look would be in techniques that would be used, and if they are sufficient. We should look to what the technology can do to inform the process, and not specify a technology unless it has to be done a certain way. The rules also need to be robust enough to allow new technologies to conform.
• Concern raised reagarding the text specifying "caption and audio description" that we may lose the value from the SMIL work for accessibility in multimedia and documents.
• AV subcommittee has submitted their draft language which only talks about caption and audio descriptions.

Provision 3:

• Discussed why it is important to clearly encode color information in the document format. Accessibility of what is in the encoding of content not just by UA but another format. Any assumption that we make about a document content rendering content to the screen is not a good test to use. It may not work in another format. Obtaining a color value by seeing it on the screen is a bad assumption. Document content may contain binary or a small executable that contains the color info in the binary. A color value statement should be clearly specified.
• Questioned asked "Are we aiming for color alone shall not be the only means of conveying the information? Is that where we are heading with this?". Reponse was "No these are not the guidelines for authors. This is a set of requirements that a content format needs to met to accomplish it."
• Allen and Peter to work this off line. Format must contain color values and the key for the values in the format itself.
• Action: Peter & Allen to work through proposed language for this.

Provision 4

• Potential concern raised with provision #4 "2 dimensional display of information" language could be confusing.
• Action: Peter, to suggest an alternative.

Provision 5:

• Concern that we are setting a standard that Word can not meet. Provision 6 also has the same issue.
• The newer version of office supports headings for tables in its encoding format (.docx).
• New 508 won’t be in effect for a couple of years so this is not much of a concern.
• Recommendation to go with this provision language.

Provision 6:

• Clarification made between provision 5, 1194.22(g), "a way to identify" verses provision 6, 1194.22(h), "way to associate them (span mulitply cells) headers vs. associating a certain set of cells with a header.
• Recommendation made for something simple like "associate row or column header with its corresponding cell or cells displayable by a user agent."
• Recommendation to use language of (h), specifically "...for data tables that have two or more logical levels of row or column headers."
• Comment on provision 5 would allow you to programmatically determinable and provision 6 provides cell association.
• Recommend changing provision 5 to identify and associate column headers to handle simple tables, and 6 would address multi column, then the language, “When a document format that supports data table that has 2 or more…” would be appropriate.
• Action: Andi will revise provision 5 and 6.
• Suspended content discussion to allow time for Rich’s presentation.

Web: Harmonization with WCAG 2.0

• Proposal
• Discussion beginning with 22 (g)
  • Not discussed

Web: Valid and Well-Formed code

• Not discussed

API Requirements

• Proposal
• Discussion
  • Not discussed

Presentation

• Future directions of Web applications by Rich Schwerdtfeger
• Rich used Powerpoint slides and alive demo.
• Powerpoint slides were sent prior to the meeting via e-mail
  • Screen sharing tool was used - http://my.adobe.acrobat.com/teitac
  • Apologies that the tool itself is not accessible but Rich provided descriptions of all visuals, so that participants who could not see the screen can understand the demo.
  • Presentation required at least Flash 7 to view the live demo.

Comments and Questions

• Question on keyboard navigation: not all platforms have identical keyboard mappings (e.g. expanding/collapsing tree items). Is there any provision for determining what they should be for an accessible DHTML application running in a browser on a particular platform?
• WAI-ARIA doesn't define the style guide for implementing keyboard navigation, it provides infrastructure. Another effort in W3C to work on style guides. Not seeing them addressing this now.
• Something CSS-like could be used here.

New Action Items:

1. Judy Brewer will get updated langauge from WCAG 2.0 on captions and audio descriptions.
2. Peter Korn & Allen Hoffman to work through proposed language for provision 3 of the content proposal.
3. Peter Korn to suggest an alternative for "2 dimensional display of information" language in provision 4 of the content proposal.
4. Andi Snow-Weaver will revise provision 5 and 6 of the content proposal.

Attendees:

1. Blene Bekure (LMIT)
2. Jim Allan (W3C)
3. Tom Brett (tcs associates)
4. Chuck Letourneau (Industry Canada alt.)
5. Amy Chen (Oracle)
6. Bruce Bailey (Access Board)
7. Sharon Snider - IBM
8. Jim Tobias
9. Ken Kipnes (oracle)
10. Andi Snow-Weaver - IBM
11. Allen Hoffman Department of Homeland Security
12. Don Barrett
13. Judy Brewer (W3C/WAI)
14. Luke Kowalski, Oracle
15. Gregg Vanderheiden
16. Greg Fields (RIM)
17. Sean Hayes (Microsoft)
18. Peter Korn, Sun Microsystems, Inc.
19. Drew LaHart - IBM
20. Jamie Smith, FL Blind
21. Laura Ruby
22. Angela Hooker
23. Michael Cooper, W3C
24. Terry Weaver - gsa
25. Jim Elekes (Access Board)
26. David Oyola
27. Andrew Kirkpatrick (Adobe)