Web and Software: March 7

Miscellaneous

• Minutes from February 21, 2007 approved.
• Minutes from February 28, 2007 approved.

Review of action items

1. IN PROCESS: 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. Item should be closed soon. Will put Rich on the agenda to give presentation.
   • Rich's presentation scheduled for March 14th.
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.
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.
5. IN PROCESS: Jim Allan has to formulated the appropriate W3C copyright notice and is awaiting approval, then it will be added to all wiki pages that quote W3C provisions.
6. Allen Hoffman will work on langauge and platform issues as a starting point for applets and plugins.
7. IN PROCESS: Andi Snow-Weaver to identify additional requirements that would need to be added to 1194.22 for applets and plugins. Review of mapping would be a good starting point.
8. IN PROCESS: Allen Hoffman will work on proposal for provisions to address authoring tools and user agents.
9. IN PROCESS: Jamie Smith will provide a concrete proposal for suppressing unneeded functions that can be discussed next week.
10. 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

Cognitive: Compatibility with AT

• Discussed the ability to determine the definition of a word in rendered text by providing the function, or supporting the necessary API that allows the AT to perform the function.
• Currently, there is not a technology for word highlighting. Most are application specific using various techniques and inconsistent across content and platforms. If we decide to put this in here and there is not an AT that provides this function, does the software have to provide it? Recommended that the current provisions be re-written because the existing text implies the existence of ATs.
• Application must expose certain things to the AT, so what can we require today, given what we know about the market, to allow us to address the core cognitive issues?
  • Cognitive requirements are similar to supporting screen readers and screen magnifiers.
  • Is there anything that is needed for cognitive AT that is unique?
  • The application must have full text even if text is a picture. If there is text to read, it should be accessible to OCR. At least one tool exists that can read a screenshot called, Read and Write, but it is not tried and tested with cognitive disabilities.
  • 508 does not include a rule that covers precise text associated with pictures, rather then just descriptive text. WCAG 2.0 has gone a long way in solving the alt-text problem of conveying the appropriate text for Web accessibility.
  • Exposing text can cause potential collision with authors that do not want to expose the text (digital rights issue).
  • Need a definition of what text is.
• Conclusion: Put this on hold until we get back to the API requirements proposal.

Cognitive: Suppression of unneeded functions

• We need to have a recommendations section and make this an advisory requirement.

Software: Authoring tools and user agent provisions

• Concerns with the language, “programmatic assessment and remediation of those attributes must be provided to expedite such creation or modification” is very vague.
• The requirement should be that the content to end-user must be accessible even if there are a variety of applications used to produce the final output.
• Request to use definition of "authoring tool" from W3C/WAI. Any software or collection of software components used to create or modify web content for publication.
• Concern about testability. Functional outcomes and what we need to test against will be included in Katie’s proposal from the ATAG guidelines.
• Document encoding formats are about what the format must provide, not what an authoring tool should do.
• Existing software requirements already covers the authoring tool itself, but currently do not cover the output.
• We should not limit ourselves to just the web. Email, and word documents need to be accessible too.
• One very important requirement is that a tool must not undo accessibility features or remove any work that was previously completed.
• Tools that are advertised as authoring tools for content need to produce accessible output. This should be included as a simple requirement.
• Currently, Web content must comply with 508. Purchasers need to ask the question, “Will the tool create 508 compliant content?
• This discussion will continue next week.

Summary of New Action Items

No new actions items.

Attendees

1. Nick Truesdell (IRS)
2. Tom Brett (tcs associates)
3. Greg Fields (Research In Motion)
4. Andi Snow-Weaver - IBM
5. Katie Haritos-Shea
6. Peter Korn, Sun Microsystems, Inc.
7. Jamie Smith, FL Blind Services
8. Ken Kipnes (Oracle)
9. Amy Chen (Oracle)
10. Curtis Chong
11. Mike Fratkin (RSIS/SSA)
12. REX LINT - ITAA
13. Jessica Brodey (ATIA)
14. Shannon Rapuano - IBM
15. Drew LaHart - IBM
16. Sean Hayes (Microsoft)
17. Andrew Kirkpatrick (Adobe)
18. Michael Cooper, W3C
19. Laura Ruby
20. David Oyola (Ricoh Corporation)
21. Jim Elekes; Access Board
22. Eric Damery, Freedom Scientific
23. Jim Elekes (Access Board)
24. Blene Bekure
25. Barbara Lybarger, Mass. Office on Disability
26. Gregg Vanderheiden
27. Sharon Snider - IBM