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Thread: Introduction
Number of posts in this thread: 11 (In chronological order)
From: Ella Yu
Date: Mon, Nov 09 2015 12:31PM
Subject: Introduction
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Hi all, I'm Ella and I'm a blind person.
From: MEJ - Beth Sullivan
Date: Tue, Nov 10 2015 6:45AM
Subject: Re: Introduction
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Welcome to the discussion group Ella!
On Mon, Nov 9, 2015 at 2:31 PM, Ella Yu < = EMAIL ADDRESS REMOVED = > wrote:
> Hi all, I'm Ella and I'm a blind person.
> > > > >
From: Eero Hauskamaa
Date: Tue, Nov 10 2015 4:31PM
Subject: Re: introduction
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Hi
Velcome to the discussion list Ella. My name is Eero and I'm a
blind linux user from Finland.
Eero
From: Chaals McCathie Nevile
Date: Wed, Nov 11 2015 5:00AM
Subject: Re: Introduction
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On Mon, 09 Nov 2015 20:31:41 +0100, Ella Yu < = EMAIL ADDRESS REMOVED = > wrote:
> Hi all, I'm Ella and I'm a blind person.
Hi Ella, and welcome. It occurs to me I never introduced myself when I
joined this list.
I'm chaals, and I work at Yandex (you can look that up at
http://yandex.com - it's a search engine among other things, and it is
very big in Russia). I'm one of the co-chairs of the W3C's Web Platform
group, which is responsible for the next version of HTML, and I'm one of
the coordinators of the W3C's HTML accessibility Task Force - which might
just fold itself into the Web Platform group and stop being a separate
thing.
I've previously worked as head of standards at the Opera browser, and at
W3C on the staff of their Web Accessibility Initiative, and in the
Semantic Web activity, and in the distant past of the 1990s at RMIT
University doing Web and accessibility stuff.
So some of the mistakes we made last century are my fault, and I hope some
of the good things we've done are partly my fault too.
Right now I am working on a few different things:
How to make accessible SVG and how to improve SVG to make that easier. I'm
playing with a set of examples that you can find at
https://github.com/SVG-access-W3CG/use-case-examples
- how to make interacting with web apps more accessible (reconsidering the
approach we use), and a whole pile of things that are easier by
comparison.There is a draft proposal at
chaals.github.io/accesskey/index.src.html which has various issues still:
https://github.com/chaals/accesskey/issues This is under discussion as a
potential change to HTML in the W3C's Web Incubator Community Group:
<http://discourse.wicg.io/t/user-interaction-with-web-apps/1177>; although
I have been talking about the ideas in various places for more than a
decade.
- How to make ARIA integrate better in mainstream browsers. Right now ARIA
is only directed at accesssibility APIs. This means that for the most part
only people who use screenreaders are getting any tangible benefit from
it. In practice, screen magnification and alternative input such as voice
or eye-tracker systems could also connect to the accessibility APIs, but
people who use built-in browser features like zoom, keyboard navigation
and the like are shut out by design. I think this needs to change.
- schema.org description of "documents". And other things. Schema has some
vocabulary designed to describe the accessibility of a resource, with the
idea being that you can look for things that are accessible to you,
regardless of who else they might or might not work for. But at the moment
it is not very good, and I want to improve that.
- schema.org description of the accessibility of places. There are
literally millions of places described using schema.org metadata. Adding
some information about the physical accessibility would be very helpful.
We need to develop a vocabulary for this that starts small enough to
experiment. I have looked at similar, more focused efforts, and there is a
lot of valuable thinking but it is unclear if anyone has really tried to
do this at the scale of "all the web" yet, and things for schema need to
work on that scale to be acceptable.
There are various other things I work on in accessibility - and there are
more things than accessibility in my day job.
Maybe this list is why I don't use facebook, only occasionally use
twitter, and generally stay away from "social media". I'd like to get
things made, and I have to limit the amount of time I spend chattering to
people in order to achieve that. Although not talking to people is a
recipe for making things that aren't what they want. I use email a lot,
and like to spend time face to face with people.
And that's far too much for an introduction, so if you made it to here
feel free to claim a beverage of choice from me if you meet me somewhere,
as reward.
cheers
--
Charles McCathie Nevile - web standards - CTO Office, Yandex
= EMAIL ADDRESS REMOVED = - - - Find more at http://yandex.com
From: _mallory
Date: Fri, Nov 13 2015 1:30AM
Subject: Re: Introduction
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On Wed, Nov 11, 2015 at 01:00:18PM +0100, Chaals McCathie Nevile wrote:
> Right now I am working on a few different things:
>
> How to make accessible SVG and how to improve SVG to make that
> easier. I'm playing with a set of examples that you can find at
> https://github.com/SVG-access-W3CG/use-case-examples
Great set. I'm going to go through them.
I've recently run into drag and drop SVGs and other puzzle-like SVGs.
Are you also looking into more interactive SVGs, or are you thinking
those sorts ought to stick to non-SVG-ish things on the web?
> - schema.org description of the accessibility of places. There are
> literally millions of places described using schema.org metadata.
> Adding some information about the physical accessibility would be
> very helpful. We need to develop a vocabulary for this that starts
> small enough to experiment. I have looked at similar, more focused
> efforts, and there is a lot of valuable thinking but it is unclear
> if anyone has really tried to do this at the scale of "all the web"
> yet, and things for schema need to work on that scale to be
> acceptable.
Such a thing could get more planet-wide coverage if it (at a later
point) became integrated into all the carryable/wearable tech people
have with them. Instead of checking into 4square, their devices
could let them add/update information about some physical place they're
at. As Much Automation As Reasonably Achievable could cover a lot of
space.
_mallory
From: Chaals McCathie Nevile
Date: Fri, Nov 13 2015 3:53AM
Subject: Re: Describing accessibility of places Introduction
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On Fri, 13 Nov 2015 09:30:09 +0100, _mallory < = EMAIL ADDRESS REMOVED = >
wrote:
> On Wed, Nov 11, 2015 at 01:00:18PM +0100, Chaals McCathie Nevile wrote:
>> - schema.org description of the accessibility of places. There are
>> literally millions of places described using schema.org metadata.
>> Adding some information about the physical accessibility would be
>> very helpful. We need to develop a vocabulary for this that starts
>> small enough to experiment. I have looked at similar, more focused
>> efforts, and there is a lot of valuable thinking but it is unclear
>> if anyone has really tried to do this at the scale of "all the web"
>> yet, and things for schema need to work on that scale to be
>> acceptable.
>
> Such a thing could get more planet-wide coverage if it (at a later
> point) became integrated into all the carryable/wearable tech people
> have with them. Instead of checking into 4square, their devices
> could let them add/update information about some physical place they're
> at. As Much Automation As Reasonably Achievable could cover a lot of
> space.
Yes. But we're right now in the territory of baby steps, so that when we
get there we can be confident that we only make new and interesting
mistakes :)
In particular, I hope to have stuff that is experimental and introductory.
And as a general background, we need things that are easy enough that
people don't get them wrong, otherwise the data becomes useless. The
approach is very much geared to "find a place that is OK for *me*" rather
than "find a place that did a good job meeting accessibility requirements
in general".
My first thinking was to have "x-wheelchairFriendlyNotes" and
"x-problemsForWheelchairs". The idea is that the former is likely to be
filled in by the people who are promoting a venue, pointing out all the
good things they have done, and the latter by people reviewing, who might
have a different experience.
The thinking is that this will help us get a sense of what people are
prepared to describe in practice, as well as some sense of how to handle
granularity - for example many bars in Madrid have zero to two steps,
which makes them accessible to some wheelchair users in some situations.
They often have the toilet downstairs, which again is useful information.
As bad as it is in a general sense, not everybody actually uses the toilet
in a bar.
But that got some pushback. An alternative proposal was "can a wheelchair
get into the front door?" Which I would be OK with except that it wasn't
set up as something we could use and I didn't follow it up.
cheers
Chaals
--
Charles McCathie Nevile - web standards - CTO Office, Yandex
= EMAIL ADDRESS REMOVED = - - - Find more at http://yandex.com
From: Chaals McCathie Nevile
Date: Fri, Nov 13 2015 3:53AM
Subject: Re: SVG accessibility Introduction
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On Fri, 13 Nov 2015 09:30:09 +0100, _mallory < = EMAIL ADDRESS REMOVED = >
wrote:
> On Wed, Nov 11, 2015 at 01:00:18PM +0100, Chaals McCathie Nevile wrote:
>> Right now I am working on a few different things:
>>
>> How to make accessible SVG and how to improve SVG to make that
>> easier. I'm playing with a set of examples that you can find at
>> https://github.com/SVG-access-W3CG/use-case-examples
>
> Great set. I'm going to go through them.
> I've recently run into drag and drop SVGs and other puzzle-like SVGs.
> Are you also looking into more interactive SVGs, or are you thinking
> those sorts ought to stick to non-SVG-ish things on the web?
I'd love to have interactive stuff. To be honest, the current state of the
art is pretty woeful even for static SVG, but I don't think interactitvity
is actually worse. I have a couple of test cases for animation at
http://svg-access-w3cg.github.io/svg-a11y-tests/index.html and more are
welcome. For more complex stuff, if it is licensed freely for playing and
sharing please add them to the repo or send them to me and ask me to do
so...
cheers
--
Charles McCathie Nevile - web standards - CTO Office, Yandex
= EMAIL ADDRESS REMOVED = - - - Find more at http://yandex.com
From: Bourne, Sarah (ITD)
Date: Fri, Nov 13 2015 8:29AM
Subject: Re: Describing accessibility of places Introduction
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This is an interesting and challenging area to work on, Chaals.
The accessibility of places actually covers a lot more than just, "Can a wheelchair get in the front door?" Just looking at the issues for people using wheelchairs, they would want to know if they could also get to and use a table or service counter. In other cases, blind people might like to know if the elevators have audible announcements and Braille button labels.
Here in Massachusetts, we have an entire state agency devoted to setting and enforcing regulations "to make public buildings accessible to, functional for, and safe for use by persons with disabilities." The regulations cover things from counter height to door weight and hardware to aisle widths etc., etc., etc. Without doing the research, I'm willing to bet they're based on the requirements of the US Access Board, so there would be a lot of commonality in the US. If you print them all out, they could actually weigh more than I do, but it could be taken as the outside limit of what a vocabulary would require, at least in terms of access compliance. I can see why you would want to start small. But you would want the schema to support the full range for those willing and capable of reporting on it.
And there are other things a venue could be providing that go beyond that that they would actually want to brag about, such as using "beacons" in museums for wayfinding and providing additional information. I would expect reporting on "features" like this to more accurate.
Maybe this is an Internet of Things problem, and facilities should be able to report on themselves. Rather than people trying to manually provide this metadata, they could just call in the API. (I wish I lived in the future!)
sb
Sarah E. Bourne
Director of IT Accessibility, MassIT
Commonwealth of Massachusetts
1 Ashburton Pl. rm 1601 Boston MA 02108
617-626-4502
= EMAIL ADDRESS REMOVED =
http://www.mass.gov/MassIT
From: Chaals McCathie Nevile
Date: Fri, Nov 13 2015 11:32AM
Subject: Re: Describing accessibility of places Introduction
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On Fri, 13 Nov 2015 16:29:46 +0100, Bourne, Sarah (ITD)
< = EMAIL ADDRESS REMOVED = > wrote:
> This is an interesting and challenging area to work on, Chaals.
>
> The accessibility of places actually covers a lot more than just, "Can a
> wheelchair get in the front door?" Just looking at the issues for
> people using wheelchairs, they would want to know if they could also get
> to and use a table or service counter. In other cases, blind people
> might like to know if the elevators have audible announcements and
> Braille button labels.
Absolutely. One reason for starting with "can I get inside in the first
place" is that we know there is a huge granularity in things people would
like to know, but we don't know much about getting people to voluntarily
add that data and what things they are likely to do and get right.
Unfortunately, in most of the world there is no effective regulation
covering all the things that Massachusetts requires, let alone enforcing
it (which is imperfect even in places with good law).
If we start requesting data, and confuse people to the extent that they
confuse the data, we end up with a large amount of work that cannot be
used. Which comes at a very big price. Even assuming that people work in
english (which on the Web is mostly the wrong assumption now) this gives
us pause.
So yes, we definitely want to be able to provide useful information, that
covers the various things people need to know, and there are lots of those.
> Here in Massachusetts, we have an entire state agency devoted to setting
> and enforcing regulations "to make public buildings accessible to,
> functional for, and safe for use by persons with disabilities." The
> regulations cover things from counter height to door weight and hardware
> to aisle widths etc., etc., etc. Without doing the research, I'm
> willing to bet they're based on the requirements of the US Access Board,
> so there would be a lot of commonality in the US. If you print them all
> out, they could actually weigh more than I do, but it could be taken as
> the outside limit of what a vocabulary would require, at least in terms
> of access compliance. I can see why you would want to start small. But
> you would want the schema to support the full range for those willing
> and capable of reporting on it.
Yes, I do. And I don't want to waste a lot of people's work doing that
wrong. I am prepared to bet a small fortune that if I just ask people to
provide data according to the US Access Board requirements, most of my
market (a couple of hundred million people whose primary work language is
Russian) will get no benefit at all - and even in the US, only a
relatively small proportion of places will manage to provide good-quality
information that is useful to real people.
> And there are other things a venue could be providing that go beyond
> that that they would actually want to brag about, such as using
> "beacons" in museums for wayfinding and providing additional
> information. I would expect reporting on "features" like this to more
> accurate.
Yes.
> Maybe this is an Internet of Things problem, and facilities should be
> able to report on themselves. Rather than people trying to manually
> provide this metadata, they could just call in the API. (I wish I lived
> in the future!)
In part that is the case. Indeed, people like the late and lamented
William Loughborough built decades of experience already - which is sort
of copied in some high-profile modern projects to replicate that.
Schema isn't the only solution, but it happens to be widespread,
associated with high-profile search engines, and part of my job…
So I hope we can use it to improve things somewhat, even while we wait for
the internet of truthful things to fix everything. Although I suspect it
will be a while yet before the steps to cross the road near my office warn
me that they are slippery, or that the step into my favourite bar in Léon
warns people entering that it has a scary dip worn into the middle from
people walking on it.
cheers
Chaals
--
Charles McCathie Nevile - web standards - CTO Office, Yandex
= EMAIL ADDRESS REMOVED = - - - Find more at http://yandex.com
From: sucharu
Date: Wed, Nov 18 2015 9:49PM
Subject: Re: introduction: Sucharu Gupta
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Hello list,
Greetings!
I am Sucharu Gupta residing in India. I work as Accessibility Consultant at
QA infotech Ltd.
I look forward to gain benefits to solve challenges we face while workingfor
accessibility of our projects.
Thanks,
Sucharu
From: Ella Yu
Date: Wed, Nov 18 2015 10:46PM
Subject: Re: introduction: Sucharu Gupta
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Welcome Sccharu.
----- Original Message -----
From: "sucharu" < = EMAIL ADDRESS REMOVED =
To: < = EMAIL ADDRESS REMOVED =
Date sent: Thu, 19 Nov 2015 10:19:43 +0530
Subject: [WebAIM] introduction: Sucharu Gupta
Hello list,
Greetings!
I am Sucharu Gupta residing in India. I work as Accessibility
Consultant at
QA infotech Ltd.
I look forward to gain benefits to solve challenges we face while
workingfor
accessibility of our projects.
Thanks,
Sucharu