Weekly Backplane XG Teleconference -- 26 Aug 2008

<oedipus> danbri and i had thought of it as a proof-of-concept for ARIA before CR, but it is more a backplane project than a client-side project

<oedipus> http://groups.google.com/group/opensocial

<oedipus> [fyi] new public beta of best-selling (market dominant) windows-based commercial screen reader will support ARIA live regions - http://freedomscientific.com/downloads/jaws/JAWS-public-beta.asp

<oedipus> [fyi] just announced/released this week

<oedipus> [fyi] excellent ARIA live regions demo/proof-of-concept: "Making Twitter Tweet" http://www.paciellogroup.com/blog/?p=65

<Charlie> nice, that should be helpful for us

<oedipus> it is very impressive what the paciello group did with twitter, which is otherwise inaccessible

<Charlie> so my basic question for the meeting today is what could we do with a really focused effort (i.e. not a lot of time available) to show something interesting in a simple form like the loan one...

<Charlie> it would be great to reuse whatever the YUI framework already has for ARIA enablement

<Charlie> over the longer term we probably want to bake this in natively into the ubiquity framework but maybe can avoid this in the next month to get a demo working by reusing YUI support

<oedipus> http://developer.yahoo.com/yui/examples/menu/menuwaiaria.html

<oedipus> i can get victor tsaran, head of accessibility (a11y) at yahoo, to communicate with us -- i'm sure he'd be interested

<Charlie> ok, let's discuss during the call

<oedipus> http://developer.yahoo.com/yui/event/

<oedipus> [fyi] haven't yet installed the new public beta of JAWS 10, but if i can get it to work reliably, i may be able to give the XG a better "picture" of what a difference ARIA makes

<Charlie> k

<oedipus> [fyi] i also use NVDA (open source windows screen reader) which has live region support and, on linux, Orca (http://live.gnome.org/Orca) which also has begun implementing live regions

<oedipus> [fyi] http://www.nvda-project.org/

<Charlie> mac

<Charlie> but most of our development is still under windows

<Charlie> (i use parallels a lot)

<oedipus> lucky man - you have access to VoiceOver which is also enabling ARIA live regions

<oedipus> i'm split between a linux box and a bunch of semi-functional windows boxes

<Charlie> i've not yet taken the linux plunge

<oedipus> only reason i haven't gone totally linux is so as to keep in touch with the realities of the "average user"

<oedipus> when it comes to assistive technology, one is at the mercy of what the pertinent agency knows or -- worse -- at the mercy of an "exclusive vendor" who only demonstrate a very small sample of what is available

<oedipus> http://www.apple.com/macosx/features/300.html#universalaccess

<Charlie> thanks for the link...will check it out

<oedipus> no problem - will dial-in momentarily

<Charlie> Scribe: Rahul

<Charlie> Agenda: http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-xg-app-backplane/2008Aug/0022.html

<Steven> zakim is slow today

<Charlie> http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-xg-app-backplane/2008Aug/0022.html

<oedipus> list of links from JAWS9 for http://ubiquity-xforms.googlecode.com/svn/branches/loan-form/_samples/Loan/loan-lowercase.html reported as "0 button" which, when chosen populated the form fields

<Charlie> smile

<JohnBoyer> :-)

<oedipus> [fyi] there is work on a date-picker widget in PF for an ARIA example that could be ported to the loan form's calendar picker

Presence at Tech Plenary

Steven: strong call for more demonstrations

Charlie: these will be longer than a lightening talk?

Steven: lots of space for presentations and discussions, so yes
... CfP will go out this week, proposals within 2-3 weeks

Resolution: we will get a proposal or two in

Cross-pollination with other WGs

Charlie: spoke to Al, Dave (?)

<Charlie> will redial

<Charlie> sorry

Charlie: plan to meet with MMI Mon/Tue, spoke to Debbie Dahl

<Charlie> got dropped

Charlie: can also meet with Voice later in the week if needed

<oedipus> [fyi] johnB, http://esw.w3.org/topic/GregoryRosmaita/FormsFeedback2008-07 (for HTML5 is being ported to the PF's HTML5 Issues & Requirements - http://esw.w3.org/topic/GregoryRosmaita/FormsFeedback2008-07

Charlie: might want to sync up with the Ubiquitous web WG (Dave R.)

<oedipus> [fyi] http://esw.w3.org/topic/PF/XTech

Charlie: two webapps groups, mark-up vs. API level (?) -- might set up a meeting with them

JohnB: might want to evangelize the Ubiquity work to these groups -- connection to backplane and implementation avenue for standards

ARIA enablement

<Charlie> http://ubiquity-xforms.googlecode.com/svn/branches/loan-form/_samples/Loan/loan-lowercase.html

Charlie: we can look at the loan form Ubiquity example as a starting point

oedipus: makes sense, we are currently working on a datepicker widget, so I'd be interested in looking at the calendar from the ARIA enablement PoV

Charlie: lets see if we can converge on the scenario we'd like to show and the effort needed to implement that
... lets stick to the YUI case (since more of that functionality is available in Ubiquity)
... we have this notion of abstract control (where notions of relevance, data validity are expressed) -- which further can become an xf:input, xf:select1 etc., maybe we can look at ARIA enabling at this abstract level?

oedipus: from the point of assistive technology, I can think of the datepicker as a tree-grid for ARIA enablement
... datepicker ARIA enablement seems like a good thing to target -- its generally hard to translate these kinds of forms to various input / output devices

Charlie: is there a calendar widget in YUI that is independently being ARIA-enabled?

oedipus: not sure if it exists right now (can follow up with Victor)

Charlie: if it doesn't exist, we may be able to add that by making necessary changes on the Ubiquity side (?)

oedipus: entails adding scribe-by owned-by etc. ARIA properties to various elements of the datepicker

Charlie: not quite clear how we've made the point that the Ubiquity framework is ARIA-enabled

oedipus: this is a good starting point, and a way to identify the shortcomings and advantages for integrating ARIA mark-up
... was able to run loan form on Grand Paradiso nightly
... datepicker identified as button

rahul: here is a full calendar URL (slow loading off SVN): http://ubiquity-xforms.googlecode.com/svn/trunk/_samples/yui-custom-controls/input-calendar.html

<Charlie> thanks steven!

rahul: actually, theres 3 calendars on that sample page!

Charlie: whats the live region for the datepicker?

oedipus: the entire calendar, so when it pops up it would announce what month and date its showing
... also would need to set up politeness / rudeness levels of various alerts
... in theory, the widget should tell you what is available -- and support step-by-step navigation
... there is a special mode in the screen reader called form mode -- there is a key overlay on the keyboard for the form mode
... when a form exists in a table, the contextual information is hard to get (in a typical flat form, mitigated by XForms)
... ARIA is trying to break things down in easily digestable chunks

Charlie: interesting to see how everything gets expressed in the datepicker mark-up
... can work with trunk code and a local version of the calendar source
... narrowing down to calendar widget is an interesting enough piece of work (and may provide some guidance for moving ahead)
... this exercise will help identify what ARIA bits we can harvest and drive down deeper into the Ubiquity library infrastructure

Resolution: oedipus to look at ARIA enabling the datepicker from Ubiquity trunk

Charlie: adjourn?

- DRAFT -

Weekly Backplane XG Teleconference

26 Aug 2008

Attendees

Contents

Presence at Tech Plenary

Cross-pollination with other WGs

ARIA enablement

Summary of Action Items

Scribe.perl diagnostic output