Web and Software: August 08

Miscellaneous

• Minutes approved from August 01, 2007.
• Project Plan
  • Sean will help with definitions and Andi will send him a note with information on where we ended up.
  • Authoring tools will be on the agenda today and we are hoping to close on it. There may be one or two that need to carry over.
  • Content format proposal validation
    • Sean Hayes has not done WMV but but has done ooXML
    • Andrew Kirkpatrick - will get Flash/SWF done next week.
    • Jim Allan stated HTML 5 may still be in flux. He will post to the list.
    • Judy has not been able to do anything on SVG and xForms. Will try later this week.
    • We Should plan to complete our work on normative provisions and definitions before the next TEITAC meeting in September.
• Another meeting next Tuesday 8/14? Sometime between 12 and 4 pm EST. Will send a note to the list for preferred time.
  • Captioning is needed for next Tuesday and Andi will ping Tom by Friday to confirm time.

Review of action items

1. 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.
2. Allen Hoffman will sync provision 2 with AV group definition by next week.
   • Allen will be in AV meeting this afternoon. There is still some turmoil on the definition. Hopefuly it will be laid to rest today. He is not confident the one they have now is the final.
3. COMPLETE: Peter Korn to provide a proposal for explanatory sentence on WCAG 1.3.3
   • 1.3.3 Size, Shape, Location: Instructions provided for understanding and operating content do not rely on shape, size, visual location, or orientation of components.
   • Peter will see what he can do next week.
   • Completed and posted to the list.
4. COMPLETE: Allen Hoffman will start a discussion on Second Life on the list with introductory information and other info gathered from General.
   • Allen will try to do by next Friday.
   • This is a proprietary technology and is not based on Internet standards. We want to start on it here. It is a lower priority then other things for the next draft. We can at least start a discussion on list.
5. IN PROCESS: Katie Haritos-Shea will write a proposal for tactile and aural user preference settings.
   • Mailing list discussion started

Technical Topics

Second Life

• Summary of discussion and issues
  • Jon Paul and Kate gave an introduction on Second Life. Its a video game type environment where you can create yourself as who you wish to be. It allows a commerce and social based life style. Grouping people by interest that can communicate without time and space boundaries. Also has an open source environment. There is a lot of persistent change in this environment, allowing universal access in a very personal way. Citizen centric function. Government organizations are seeing this as a viable way to communicate with their citizens. It is probably the future of the Internet. NASA has a space within Second Life. It's a representation of the real world where you stand on land, walk around and interact with the objects around you. You can buy and create objects and interact with other individuals.
  • Judy discussed Barriers:
    • Registration is not accessible, problems for reading disabilities.
    • Difficult to follow tutorials. Note cards, maps signs etc. Unclear if there is anyway to get information.
    • Images also have problems visually.
    • Auditory environment has no captioning.
    • Events in the environment; will their actions be described or accompanied by audio cues?
    • Chat; is there voice to text conversion?
    • Heads up Menu display; what is the accessibility of the interface?
    • Can one's location coordinates be queried and is it accessible?
  • July TEITAC Draft:
    • Majority of provisions would be generally applicable. Question about at what level?
    • Hardware aspects of products would probably not be relevant.
    • Software in general, many would be relevant. AT may be best met with on board AT, rather then with other types of Software.
    • Voice conversation would be subject to the real time provisions.
• Some have suggested that 508 is not applicable because the technology is not mature. There are already a lot of things in provisions that would apply. Not our job to determine which do and don't apply. AT operation looks at a static environment that doesn't move, or is tied to other users. Even if it was exposed to AT, could it work properly in this environment? That is where it probably will break down. Not sure there is anything else we can add in as a standard.
• Second Life is one instance of many virtual environments. There are other sites that are accessible. Note July 6th draft, many aspects of our provisions will provide guidance. There maybe some behaviors or features that are not covered but it appears many will be covered.
• Pervasive community has embraced this. Grid computing and IEEE standards... pervasive is where this stuff is going.
• Agreed to form a sub-team to consider and bring forward additional proposals if appropriate. Kate Walser will lead.
  • Judy to provide rough notes on provision mapping.
  • If we want to add anything we need to do it by 8/17. This is not much time. If we add provisions to close gaps, have to be careful not to convey the impression that we have solved the problem. Until we validate this, we may be missing things.
  • Another point to consider is how one might make Second Life comply. What modifications are needed?

Authoring Tools Provisions

• Discussion tracking
• Latest proposal - June 27, 2007
• Discussion on June 27th proposal
• Concern about accessibility of the authoring tools themselves. Already covered by software accessibility provisions
• Some think we don't need any separate guidelines for authoring tools. Authoring tools have a "meta" function in that they create content, and there are a few different accessibility requirements that pertain to them.
• Agreed to drop the term "author" -- agreed in teleconference (agreed to reword this)
• Concerns about the general accountability chain and tools that are used with other tools in separate processes. It's difficult to verify that they are working as they should.
  • Concern is that if there is a tool involved in a step, how can one verify that? Any idea of language on how to address the concern?
• Concern with the word "publication" or "publish" in the authoring tool definition. Not every tool performs the publication step.
  • Authoring tools as they relate to publication creates difficulty, because it can't be accessible until accessibility has been added in. Everything is covered by Software and Web.
  • Concern that if we remove "publishing" from the definition, it becomes a definition for a lot of software. Creating in early stages, and many tools may not do a lot of things... such as a shell script that is never shared. Publication indicates that it is shared and has reached a certain level of maturity. Does not apply to things created for one's own use.
  • Agreed to keep the word in the definition.
• Provision 3:
  • Concern that dynamic content is difficult to test with an automated testing tool. The language is better, but not sure about highly dynamic Web pages.
  • With regard to a mode that prompts authors to create accessible content, is not to force, but to provide a mode that allows for prompting.
  • Language is interoperability with evaluation tools... sounds like it requires a plug in. It would be fine if you use an external evaluation tool. Maybe the word "compatibility" to replace "interoperability".
  • Concern raised related to providing a mode for prompting... what do we need to prompt for? We need to have clarification.
  • For authoring tools with a user interface, given breadth of the tool... many agree that this was important to include even though some of the tools in a collection may not have a user interface. It's the portion of the authoring tool that has a user interface that is related to the entire process.
  • Take specifics on prompting offline, back to the list... make it more specific without make it constraining.
    • Not sure we can come up with language that is universally agreeable. Standards need to be testable and mean something. The current language may not achieve all the goals we want regarding testability and what we have to develop for.
    • Maybe additional technical assistance as a clarification.
    • With AJAX you are talking about a Web application and moving from Web to Software. This is about static content and not a software application.
    • Testability is a concern. Deciding what and should be prompted, should be left to the authoring tool developer. What you prompt for is based on the tool. PDF, Web, Text, etc... Language is a compromise, we want them to prompt but can't prescribe what to prompt for and be generic.
• Provision 4:
  • Edited as per last weeks discussion to note the application of 508 standards. Discussed changing the wording to "at least three versions"... or leave it as one.
  • Some like the idea of more then one, but will live with one. Not sure why more than one would be required. If you provide a number of templates to do different things, and you either make the template accessible or provide a version that is accessible, what is the rationale for requiring more than one version?

Remote system access

• Discussion
  • Given the work we have done for platform on platform it is clear we are not close to final language. Our current language is trying to capture, if I have AT on my desktop and a remote desktop is running in a window on my desktop, we need to expose the accessibility information to my local AT. Would not want to constrain this to local AT since AT could be running on the remote desktop.
  • Suggestion to add a large OR phrase that another way to allow this to happen would be allow the remote system to work. Would like to open this up to questions.
  • Sean stated, the provision needs to say that the experience running remotely is the same as it is running local. The end result is that the user interface is ultimately accessible... not how it is supposed to do that.
  • Peter agrees with Sean. Not sure if saying that and no more is sufficient. Could have issues when local verses remote AT have control.
  • Could this be covered under sufficient techniques.
  • Gregg stated that sufficient techniques are things the Access Board puts out to only say what is obvious from the regs. If we don't say anything in the provision then we can not have a sufficient technique that makes it clear. So the concern is if the issue comes up, then it needs to be covered in a note, provision, or guideline in order to have a sufficient technique. If this is a special case of the AT interoperability provision, then we put a note in the AT interoperability provision, along with the sufficient technique.

Attendees

1. Tom Brett
2. Andi Snow-Weaver - IBM
3. Jessica Brodey (ATIA)
4. GreggVan
5. Sharon Snider - IBM
6. Shannon Rapuano - IBM
7. Andrew Kirkpatrick (Adobe)
8. Michele Budris, Sun Microsystems
9. Jamie Smith, FDBS
10. Judy Brewer (W3C/WAI)
11. Michael Cooper,W3C
12. Peter Wallack (Oracle)
13. Jim Elekes (Access Board)
14. Sailesh Panchang, Deque Systems
15. Eric Damery, Freedom Scientific
16. sean hayes (Microsoft)
17. Angela Hooker
18. Peter Korn, Sun Microsystems, Inc.
19. Katie Haritos-Shea
20. Kate Walser (SRA)
21. William Loughborough
22. terry weaver
23. Chris Meier
24. Earl Johnson, Sun
25. Bruce Bailey (Access Board)
26. Earl Johnson [Sun]
27. Greg Fields (RIM)
28. Jim Allan (W3C-WAI)