W3C

WAI-AGE task force

26 August 2009

Agenda

Attendees

Present
Andrew, Darren, William, Suzette
Regrets
Shadi, Alan, Michael, Helle, Jack
Chair
Andrew
Scribe
Darren

Contents


How People with Disabilities Use the Web Scenarios

William: Consider making the scenarios based on real people who have experience

Andrew: Can consider this as an ongoing part of this work

William: We don't have much social uses in our scenarios, but this is what people use

Andrew: Not sure how we bring that back to accessibility, but agrees with William

<andrew> william: spam and privacy are issues for older popele

Andrew: These are some of the actual concerns of the people we are talking about, but not directly related to accessibility

Michael's Suggested Scenario

<andrew> older blind person - http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-wai-age/2009JulSep/0015.html

Andrew: This is an older person using assistive technology. There is a perception that only younger people use assistive technology but this shows older people can use assistive technology too

William: We can have categories that we can add to so it's an increasing, dynamic resource

Andrew: Can get people to tell us about themselves so we can capture a variety of basic information

William: We could have this as an assignment at community centres when people do IT courses

Andrew: Such scenarios would make it real for people using the resource
... Should look at how to do this at a later date
... add to 'wish-list' for now

Darren: Thinks the scenario is OK, especially the last paragraph that provides a compelling reason for developers to make a site accessible

Andrew: Provide feedback to Michael if people have any

Andrew's Suggested Scenarios

<andrew> http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-wai-age/2009JulSep/0012.html

William: We must avoid being concerned with how many scenarios we have as if we create an index then it doesn't matter. The more the merrier.

Andrew: Another interesting scenario would be to involve people with temporary impairments due to an accident eg broken arm in a cast

suzette: Older people are not familiar with so many applications. Eg they may be familiar with email but not newer things like FaceBook, which young people seem to pick up

William: This maybe more an issue of new user and experienced user

Suzette: For people who are new, the cognitive support needs to be higher than those who are experienced but the current scenarios don't seem to have many novice users.

William: There is a correlation between age and having to learn how to use the Web but that's because of exposure and not because they are old

Andrew: People develop habits born through experience eg using email rather than facebook or using the telephone rather than texting. This experience effects how people adopt or want to adopt these technologies
... We should all send emails to the list with some scenario ideas for people to discuss before we make actual paragraphs

William: We should also consider creating more to start our resource. Hopefully this will spill over into other documents, not just people with disabilities, of real world examples

How People with Disabilities Use the Web - Part 3 Different Disabilities

William: We should make this more general. There are disabilities such as blindness etc but there are disabilities such as familiarity, experience etc that effect how people access the Web.

Andrew: There has been some debate already about this in EO, but out of scope here except as background
... The Visual Disabilities section discusses blindness. This discusses absolute blindness but that is different from legal blindness

William: Low vision in the next section may cover some of this

Andrew: The barriers for blindness are relatively complete but not so with the low vision scenario

Andrew: Colour Blindness has a barrier "browsers that do not support user override of authors' style sheets" is this out of date

William: Browsers now do support override but to find out how to do it you have to be an expert and that's not adequate.

Andrew: So we need to change this to "Browsers that make it difficult to change style sheets"?

Darren: Agrees

Andrew: Look at Hearing Impairments Section

William: First sentence is essential as not many people realise deaf people may not be able to read written language

Andrew: Barriers lacks "provision of sign language"

<andrew> william: importance of 'sign language as first language'

William: The number of interpreters for sign language has increased and is now common [in the USA]
... We don't have a category for deaf blind and that is now an official category of disability

Andrew: One of the barriers talk about voice input for Websites. Does anybody know anything about this in practice?

William: Voice input is too difficult for it to be a requirement.

Andrew: Should keep it but it is unlikely to become mainstream soon?
... only one barrier under Hard of Hearing. This has changed in WCAG 2.0

William: add volume to barrier list
... We focus on how vision decreases as you get old but we don't seem to focus on hearing disabilities, which can be a major issue for older people

Andrew: We may bring ageing into the barriers list as well and say that it's not static but an evolving situation
... Motor Disabilities section.
... Need to include scripting that is not accessible by keyboards and pages that cannot be tabbed through

Willia: Agrees

Darren: Agrees

William: Need to include tremble and small targets to the barriers

Andrew: Speech disabilities section

William: Seems strange as can't think of any that effect Websites

Andrew: Maybe we shouldn't ignore niche areas in our update

William: True but voice input sites would only work when you speak like a computer and they cost a lot of money.

Suzette: Turn the scenario around with a sentence talking about the opportunities for voice input. We know speech recognition software isn't very good yet but it is a solution for people with motor impairments and RSI. This would future proof the document.

William: Thinks that's a good idea.

Andrew: Good suggestion
... Cognitive and neurological disabilities Section
... Memory impairments could be expanded to talk about age related impairments eg Dementia and Alzheimers. We could talk about consistent navigation and clear language

William: This is a problem I face. I got to look something up on Wikipedia but forget what for. Don't know how to address this as a barrier. It's my problem and not the Web

Andrew: More to do with an overwhelming number of choices people have to make on a page. Can use categories to differentiate parts of the page to help people

William: This can be a problem for us all

Andrew: Mental health disabilities Section. Can't think of additional barriers

William: Maybe phrase distracting has to be expanded to include moving text

Andrew: scrolling headlines?

William: And pop ups are a barrier as they are used for real purposes sometimes rather than intrusive

Andrew: some discussion in the Multiple Disabilities Section and Aging-Related Conditions Section

Andrew: Will add some elements to the document and circulate the document for us to discuss

William: be careful with the terminology

How People with Disabilities Use the Web - Part 4 Assistive Technologies and Adaptive Strategies

William: An expansion of "structural elements" is needed as many people don't know what that means

Suzette: Agrees as she had to look what that actually meant

Andrew: People use structural elements without actually knowing the underlying reason why it works and how it works

William: We should give structure the attention it deserves.
... We should also attack the notion of captcha at every opportunity as this is one of the biggest barriers around.
... And there are proofs that it doesn't work and people can circumvent it.

Andrew: The harder they make it for the machine the harder they make it for us.

William: Excessive security. Websites that dictate how passwords should be eg it has to have a number but some people use the same password when possible that may not have a number

Andrew: Speech recognition section can benefit from Suzette's previous comment

<scribe> ACTION: Generate an annotated version of the scenarios for us to discuss next time to see what we have missed [recorded in http://www.w3.org/2009/08/26-waiage-minutes.html#action01]

Summary of Action Items

[NEW] ACTION: Generate an annotated version of the scenarios for us to discuss next time to see what we have missed [recorded in http://www.w3.org/2009/08/26-waiage-minutes.html#action01]
 
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