Web and Software: May 2

Miscellaneous

• Minutes approved from April 18, 2007.
• Face to face meeting at next TEITAC - May 22 - 24, 2007 for all Subcommittees
  • No agenda yet. Should be on Access Board Website in a few days and a notice will be sent to TEITAC mailing list.
  • Subcommittees on 2nd and 3rd day.

Review of action items

1. CLOSED: 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. Greg will post the language including the research and how it was derived to the list and send a link for WCAG levels of contrast which are; 5 to 1 large and bold, 3 to 1 contrast for low vision (20/40). 7 to 1 large and bold, 5 to 1 high contrast usually for AT users. This is the recommendation and the Committee needs to decide what to do here. In working with the Lighthouse it was felt this was a good place for minimum and recommended. Action item is closed
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. CLOSED: 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. CLOSED: 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. 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. CLOSED: 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 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. Made edit on the wiki to provision#4 Content Format Proposal and sent a note to the list.
9. 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.
10. Gregg Vanderheiden will rewrite 1194.22(j), so it is easier to understand.
    • WCAG 2.0 current wording: Content does not contain anything that flashes more than three times in any one second period, or the flash is below the general flash threshold and the red flash threshold. There is a Tool that defines the threshold formula, but as long as you don’t have more then 3 flashes formula is not needed. Based on Graham Harding's work in UK and the standards used there. Andi will put this new wording out on list for comments.
11. Andi Snow-Weaver will go back through and look for inconsistent language related to AT.

Technical Topics

Authoring Tools Proposal 2

• Agreement on Judy Brewer's suggestion to have a WAI presentation rather then extracting individual features. A lot of material there that relates to helping produce accessible content. We may need to follow WAI and add the authoring tools catergory back in.
  • Presentation needed before we can move forward as a conference call or in 3 weeks at Teitac face-to-face meeting.
  • Feedback needed on what the group feels would be most helpful in presentation. (i.e applicability, CMS, etc.)
• Next draft due June 18th. Only a couple of weeks after the Teitac meeting when draft is presented. Direction will be provided back to subcommittee. Presentation needs to be ASAP.
• Action item: Judy will look into presentation and presenter and post a note to the list to ask for input to solicit feedback for presentation content.

Cognitive Proposals

• Proposals
• Discussion
  • Concern with allowing users to individualze the application user interface. Dr. Lewis said it was inconclusive as to whether this is helpful and can be confusing when items were removed. Various cognitive disabilities find different features useful vs. problematic.
  • Could cause problems in a support environment and make it harder for anyone else to drive their Software. This is something that vendors tend to put into products but get a lot of push back when more than one person is using the tool.
  • Breaking up forms into multiple pages is also a problem. What is a page??? This could be problematic for different people. Need rationale for when someone should implement an advisory technique.
  • Greg will run it by Clayton and see if he feels this is important. Good for us to know if this is generally considered really good and if others are more important.
  • WCAG 2.0 provisions make a lot of sense. Should they be general or restricted to Web applications? Some items are really important. Need to look at them individually to decide what level of inclusion in 508.
  • Two things to consider: 1) Do not do this unless you notify the person in advance. 2) Require a higher standard on the web when a user is hitting things for the first time, vs an application used all the time that they are use to.
  • Andi will post this to the list again. WCAG Level 1 and 2 will be added to the page.

21(g) revision

• Recommended rewording from meeting discussions on November 6th and 15th, 2007
  • Current: Applications shall not override user selected contrast and color selections and other individual display attributes.
  • Recommended: Applications shall utilize user selected contrast and color selections and other individual display attributes when the availability of those selections are developed and documented according to industry standards.
• Discussion
  • The wording "Industry standard" raises lots of questions.
  • Problem in distinction between application and platform Software. Application providing vs platform settings.
  • Application vendors can't respect settings that they don't know about. They have to be official or documented. Add-ons could be a problem. People can’t test to an unknown set of extensions to the OS. Can only test to the standard user settings, the ones documented as part of the platform.
  • Recommendation to pull out information about the platform and say the application will support what the platform does.
  • Recommendation to remove the words "industry standard".
  • Revised to: Applications shall utilize user selected display settings, such as color, contrast, and large fonts, that are documented accessibility features of the platform.
  • Disagreement about the term "accessibility features". Some display preferences are not labeled as "accessibility features" but may be important for accessibility. But also concern that removing "accessibility" makes this too broad and would require support for settings that are not important for accessibility.
  • Application vendors should not be responsible for supporting features that are hidden features and not documented. Documentation takes many forms. It would be problematic if you can’t find the clause that this is an accessibility feature.
  • Action item: Peter and Sean to think about wording and provide a rewrite. Vendor should document accessibility features within the user interface.

New Action Items

• Judy Brewer will look into presentation and presenter and post a note to the list to ask for input to solicit feedback for presentation content.
• Peter Korn and Sean Hayes to think about wording for 21g and provide a rewrite. Vendor should have documented as accessibility within the user interface.

Attendance

1. Ken Kipnes (Oracle)
2. Tom Brett
3. Andi Snow-Weaver – IBM
4. Sharon Snider – IBM
5. Judy Brewer (W3C/WAI)
6. Bruce Bailey (Access Board)
7. Chris Myer – BMC
8. Jim Allan (W3C-WAI)
9. Eric Damery, Freedom Scientific
10. Peter Korn – Sun Microsystems, Inc.
11. Michael Cooper, W3C
12. Terry Weaver
13. Kate Walser (SRA)
14. Shannon Rapuano – IBM
15. Andrew LaHart – IBM
16. Sean Hayes (Microsoft)
17. Gregg Vanderheiden
18. William Loughborough
19. Jim Elekes (Access Board)
20. Angels Hooker
21. Earl Johnson, Sun
22. Luke Kowalski (Oracle)
23. Jessica Brodey (ATIA)
24. David Oyola (Ricoh Americas Corporation)
25. Amy Chen (Oracle)