W3C

- MINUTES -

EOWG

03 Apr 2009

See also: IRC log

Agenda

  1. Overview of "How People with Disabilities Use the Web" - briefly discuss:
  2. WAI-ARIA - review draft comments, including disposition of previous comments (updated 1 April), (others to be available soon, based on 13 March EOWG discussion)
  3. Improving Access to Government through Better Use of the Web - discuss draft comments (to be available soon)

Attendees

Present
Shawn, Helle, Wayne, Song, Sharron, Andrew, Alan, Liam
Regrets
Sylvie, Henny, Marco, Yeliz, Jack, Anna, Doyle, Lisa
Chair
Shawn
Scribe
Alan, Sharron

Contents


Shawn: Would like to renew the scribing and minutes clean-up rotations
... Have done overview page for How People with Disabilities use the web
... Wayne has compiled some of our WAI-ARIA comments.

Wayne: I can include remaining comments today.

Sharron: I sent you compiled comments on "Improving access to e-government" document

Shawn: I didn't receive them
... Hopefully send out this evening comments on e-Government document
... Due to deadlines, we will push back consideration of mobile Web document

Alan: No problem

How People with Disabilities use the Web., overview page

Shawn: Purpose is to provide good place in navigation, as introduction to document, rather than having people dive right into a long technical report with no WAI site navigation.
... We are also aware that it now needs updating (technologies and ?).
... Finishing the document is covered by scope of WAI-AGE project.
... People can work on it through WAI-AGE task force

http://www.w3.org/WAI/intro/people-use-web

[See also e-mail thread with purpose of document: 6 April, 7 April.]

William: Mistakenly thought this was a new version of the main document.

Sharron: Overview seems odd since this is so different in that other overview pages cover an entire suite of documents, but this one is only a single page.

Helle: Yes, the name "Overview" is confusing.

William: And I am not convinced it's even necessary

Andrew: Need to point to current version. The main doc has no WAI navigation and is very long.

Alan: I agree it is a necessary intro.

Helle: We also need to mention age of document.
... it was started almost a decade ago.
... One of the reasons it wasn't finished was due to disagreement about the supermarket employee with cognitive disability from people very experienced with that group.
... maybe we could take that out.

Shawn: We must keep some reference and recognition of cognitive disability.
... Link in first paragraph "How People with Disabilities Use the Web" links to main document.

Sharron: If the page navigation in main doc is inadequate, perhaps we could simply adapt the format of main document. Then overview would be unnecessary.

Shawn: Andrew meant that the technical doc has no WAI site navigation.
... the issue is that later, if we don't have an overview page, we can only point people to the main document
... Which has no WAI navigation or branding.

Helle: Could we split the main document up into three sections? It has a natural structure in three parts.

William: I have a strong concern about the confusion between the two documents.
... and that what we are modeling is contrary to good usability practice.

Alan: Could combine the main document into this one.

Shawn: Historically it needs to be a W3C Note for visibility and credibility.

Andrew: About whether it could be called introduction, as suggested by Sharron.

Shawn: Have tried removing alert message at top of page to see how it looks. Refresh and comment, please.

Helle: Maybe make title a link to the technical note.

Andrew: My preference is not to have a link in heading.

[All look at changing document online]

Shawn: Now have "Introduction to "How People with Disabilities Use the Web""

Helle: Need explanation that it is an introduction and that some techniques are out of date.

Sharron: Yes, it would be good to put that up front.

Helle: Should also describe the benefits of using the Web for PWDs

Sharron: And distinguish that when it referes to techniques, it is browsing or use techniques and not the development techniques so frequently referenced elsewhere in WAI docs. Can we not have two dates?

Andrew: Can say "by 2010"

Shawn: Would like it for 2009 but realistically won't be ready this year.
...parts of the main document are out of date, but it still contains much good information.

Sharron: Yes, much of the basic information is still quite useful for people who don't know PWDs.

Shawn: What about the level of detail?

William: Left-hand panel link should be "Introduction to How PWD..." because the way it is presented it looks as though we are on the "How to" doc itself.
... Referencing section, shouldn't tell people to reference the overview page.

Shawn: Right now people should not reference a working draft.

William: Nobody cares that it's an unapproved draft.
... This is just an obstacle.

Shawn: Is it logical to ask people to reference this overview when in practice they can link to whatver they want?

<Sharron> scribe: Sharron

Shawn: Any other comments on the overview? I will post, and if you think of more comments, please send to email list.

WAI-ARIA comments

<shawn> http://www.w3.org/WAI/EO/Drafts/comments/wai-aria-2009-04

Shawn: We have two sets of comments, thanks Wayne for drafting the first set and the second set is the one from the teleconference and will be included in the next draft.
... Wayne, please take us through.

Wayne: We are looking at our original comments, the editors response and determining our response to that.
... You will see 3 stars for those that still need review. Let's look at those.
... We asked that they make very clear up front what each document is, who it is for, and that there are related documents.
... While editors indicated they had addressed that concern, we did not feel it was adequately presented.

<shawn> "WAI-ARIA is a technical specification that provides an ontology to improve the accessibility and interoperability of web content and applications. This document is primarily for developers creating custom widgets and other web application components. Please see the WAI-ARIA Overview for links to related documents for other audiences, such as the WAI-ARIA Primer that introduces developers to the accessibility problems that WAI-ARIA is intended to solve, the fundament

Wayne: One thing, the term ontology is not defined anywhere in W3C; taxonomy is not defined in any way other than biolgy in W3C or anywhere else.

Shawn: How about "framework" as an alternative?

William: Taxonomy is defined in Wikipedia.

Shawn: Are we comfortable suggesting "framework?"

Liam: Yes

Wayne: The second comment that needs attention, we said that for consistency with other documents, please put WAI-ARIA in title of all referencial documents. They said that was too awkward and that they did not want to do it.

Shawn: So the question is how important is it to have a short name, that is easy to reference and how important to have the acronym written out, etc. Note how we did this for WCAG.

Liam: That is a good solution WAI ARIA...
... for each first reference and/or within any title

Shawn: adding a colon to create title and subtitle for each document.

Wayne: I am for dropping 1.0

Shawn: It is a W3C version management issue, but we can flag it for consideration.
... anything else about the headings? Back to you Wayne.

Wayne: We think the "normative/informative" distinction needs to be made more clearly. They responded that they think it is clear as it is now.

Shawn: We decided to simply reiterate that actually it is not really clear. Any further discussion needed?

Wayne: In fact, it is not clearly referenced at all. It is not even clear about what is meant by "section" when they say "This section is normative."
... In Comment 4, we said again that ARIA Overview should be WAI-ARIA Overview and they were unclear about whether we meant in all uses of ARIA or only titles.
... we clarified once that we meant titles, but do we need further clarification and discussion?

Shawn: Does anyone feel strongly one way or another about each use of ARIA. Must each use be WAI-ARIA? or just titles and first use?

Wayne: Extra wording and hyphenation does confuse and distract from the content. I personally like to read ARIA.

Shawn: But if you read WAI-ARIA for each and every use, you would tend to process it as one thing and it becomes less distracting. If it switches between ARIA nad WAI-ARIA, your brain stops and wonders how to process

Andrew: A constent use of WAI-ARIA would certainly be my preference.

Liam: Can use ARIA when speaking about it, but the written reference should consitently be to WAI-ARIA.

Shawn: I will then comment that we recommend WAI-ARIA throughout.

Wayne: Next comment was "Explain jargon like "user agent" on first use. Link terms..." Editor responded by linking and asked if the links were now perhaps overdone. Any response?
... next one open is Comment 11 "Writing rich internet applications is much more difficult than writing in HTML..."
... if we consider their rewrite, are we willing to accept this? "Writing rich internet applications and ensuring that they work on multiple browsers is much more difficult than writing simple HTML pages. In many cases, it is best to use existing widget libraries that have already gone through:... [extensive assistive technology testing, cross browser testing, testing to ensure that the widgets respond to desktop settings, testing to ensure that the widgets match a common

William: Are we recommending that they use libraries instead of WAI-ARIA?

Liam: No, that they use widget libraries that already incorporate WAI-ARIA techniques as opposed to writing widgets from scratch.

<andrew> http://www.w3.org/WAI/PF/aria-practices/#reuse_comp_lib

Liam: It is in Section 10. We may want to suggest that it is more time consuming rather than more difficult
...Something like "Writing rich internet applications and ensuring that they work on multiple browsers can be much more time consuming than writing simple HTML pages. In many cases, it is best to use existing WAI-ARIA-supporting widget libraries that have already gone through..."

Shawn: Existing libraries that implement WAI-ARIA.

Wayne: The nice thing about libraries is that if the techniques change, the libraries are likely to pick that up sooner.

Liam: Do we have any other than Dojo that have successfully implemented ARIA?

Shawn: We are not comfortable with them naming a specific toolkit within the Note, so we have suggested a separate linked page listing everyone currently supporting WAI-ARIA.
... there are a few more that do and/or will by the time this is final.

Wayne: The truth is that it is not that hard to write ARIA code.

Liam: But it is harder to standardize.
...We might suggest that there are a number of toolkits and libraries that can make your life easier and will help standardize, etc

Shawn: Do we just start then with "It is usaully better to..."

Liam: Not always better or even easier. One could write a simple script, but it is sometimes definitely better.

Shawn: There are some instances where you can just copy the code to make an ARIA-enabled widget, like the slider.
... How about "Widget libraries are available that support WAI-ARIA and have already blah blah blah..."
... but the point about standardizing is a good one.

Liam: However, if we had all standardized on the usage of specific keys as access keys, that would not have been good.
... so it is tricky.

Shawn: We want them to rethink the point of this section and articulate the cases in which they don't need a library and the ones for which they do.

Liam: For complex rich internet applications, libraries exist that have successfully implemented WAI-ARIA techniques.

Wayne: Do we want to add soemthing along the lines of "When you are in doubt, this is a good option"

Shawn: I tend to avoid giving them specific wording.

Liam: Can I check on that? Is it such a bad thing to recommend the ones who have gone through the trouble of implementing ARIA?

Shawn: But because it is a W3C Note, it will not change. So we suggest a link to a separate page that is easier to change and keep current on which they can list all who currently support ARIA.
... Comment 12 addresses that. We should clarify that we are happy to mention specific toolkits that implement WAI-ARIA as long as it is done in a format that can be kept current.

Liam: Can it be a critique page as well?

Shawn: Yes, perhaps a Wiki format that allows feedback about implementation.

Wayne: I will edit this down so that it addresses next steps.

Shawn: If there is additional information in the second round of comments, perhaps just include them here.
... anything else for today?
... will have updated comments to review. And egov comments from Sharron.
... and update of How PWD use the web
... please watch for those next week and comment on them as you are able
... thanks, we are adjourned.

Summary of Action Items

[End of minutes]

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$Date: 2009/04/07 17:25:01 $