WAI standards harmonization roadmap -- 21 Sep 2016

<mhakkinen> scribe: mhakkinen

richs: standards harmonization - large companies face challenges when standards are not harmonized. everyone makes their own standards.

standards need to be harmonized within and across countries.

<scribe> new focus on cognitive. will be new to many.

we are also fighting another problem. New laws such as 508 refrsh and EU mandate 376.

uphill battle as we come out with new requirements.

need to do a better job with translations.

can judy tell us about harminozation status.

judyb: strong request for work on standards harmonization. two distinct flavors. What is meant by stds harmonization?

1. internal coordination of standards

2. external take up of standards... take up of a11y stds for regulatory purpose, but also corporate adoption. the UN CRPD requires countries to take up stds.

inside w3c an effort to articulate the stds, and encourage countries to take up w3c work.

clarify benefits of harmonization. over time, listen to feedback from around the world for wcag1 and apply to wcag2. Tried to increase effort, but not much funding. clarification can be clarification of certain technical points, but also can be more elaborate

right now mobile a11y is hot topic in EU and China. and elsewhere. We can look at WCAG for mobile, and see if there is a statement we point to that is helpful. Questions that come include, "should we write our own WCAG?"

One of the things we'd like to come up with are standardized statements that can be posted, such as what is the relationship between WCAG and mobile accessibility. Answers the typical questions that come up.

Matt King: does this apply to native mobile apps as well as mobile browsers and sites?

Judy: that question comes up. What is the utility of WCAG2 to the mobile space. Almost all of what is in WCAG covers that space, but not complete, Some is covered in UAAG. If you think of mobile as a continuum, there are aspects of mobile a11y, particularly on the level of techniques, for specific users needs, may vary. Have in the past avoided native stuff, but there is a need.

Those in the native platform communities are requesting some of these techniques.

A need to work collaboratively to address.

Matt: where does the continuum begin and end. Desktop, chromebook, etc.

Judy: We could do this work, but then be told that we shouldn't have done the work. We don't want that situation. Users want to be able to what they want across the continuum.

RichS: one issue is translation. With limited resources, how do we get it done. Shadi?

Shadi: W3C has 2 processes for translation, both volunteer efforts. There is some abuse, and due diligence is needed to ensure the translations are accurate and not machine generated. The other is a community process with lead translation organization, where review of the translation takes place to ensure quality. mostly EU languages.

bringing it back to standards harmonization, the authorized translation itself is a robust and agreed upon translation. But the translation involved also examination of a what a transalation actually means. Authorized are very important in international standards harmonization.

<richardschwerdtfeger> trackbot q?

I have also noted that people don't realize they can volunteer to provide translation. Guidance on translation is also hard to find. This is a hurdle.

<Zakim> AWK, you wanted to talk about harmonization challenges facing WCAG today, and planned route forward

AWK: we have a very high level of harmonization for WCAG and this is seen in the uptake of WCAG. The UN CRPD has been impactful. What we are seeing now, for those who want to push beyond what WCAG covers. For example George, reports EPUB uses WCAG. What we need to do with WCAG is to operate in a more agile fashion and reduce the delta to support emerging requirements. Offering an up to date standard.

<Judy> [Quote from Andrew: "what we need to do to promote harmonization is to deserve harmonization"]

<richardschwerdtfeger> tq?

first bring WCAG 2 up to the current day, and then within 2 year periods, udpate or bring current WCAG. I feel that what we need to do is to promote harmonization is to desrve harmonization. keep up with AT and technology. Done a good job so far, and has taken longer.

alastair: one quick shared experienced. I was involved with M376. There mention of of WCAG had to occur 3 times? In the WCAG 2.1 work, some of the mobile stuff is coming along nicely. But touch and AT interaction needs to come along further

richs: is this in the new WCAG version?

awk: this is an area we need to do a heavy investigation of. Udate to 2.1 in the style of 2.0. But we need to address the larger problem. something we can't do in 2 years.

alastair: as a consultant, we have guidelines and practices, such as keyboard, but don;t solve the problem for our users.

<alastairc> scribe: alastairc

Lisa: Raise awareness, when we publish / draft things it goes immediately into other standards, e.g. ETSE, ISO user preferences etc.
... There is information harmonisation happening with people joining task forces, that's already happening. I assume it's a good thing, as industries do tend to take on WCAG.

<Zakim> Judy, you wanted to ask a question about goals

Judy: With the Mandate376 process, there was a lot of work before that about what would go into the process. There were some attempts to re-write things that would have caused issues for either implementors or users.
... We rely on and appreciate help from people's networks / communities, and pointing to W3C resources. Throughout that, we try to make apparent /transparent the benefits of harmonisation.
... Curious how this sounds to other people in the room? With the re-org we can potentially reset, do the membership support this? Would like to know there is common support so we can get help making progress.

<Zakim> jcraig, you wanted to encourage generalized accessibility guidelines, but to discourage presriptive design or modality specific guidelines

Judy: Also, can people alert us to key decisions made around the world.

JC: WGAC 1.0 was very specific to HTML. The biggest success of 2.0 was that it generalised. It applies to all web content, future web content etc. That was a great change. With Silver, it sounds like it would move outside of the web content space, but understand the need for it. So would like to encourage the continued generalisation, application of POUR.
... Anytime we get very specific about a modality, or a platform, I would discourage that path. Perhaps get companies to publish their platform guidelines.
... Would like to see more of the living documents. The rec track (e.g. ARIA mapping) has been slow, and having issues like pointing to old references, and we can't change it because it's in last call.
... Most critical, do not be prescriptive in the design. E.g. FCC sent some proposed rule about making set top boxes have buttons for closed captions & audio description. This wouldn't have worked for an Apple TV remote. Should be a higher level requirement, like make it easy to turn on captions.

George: With epub conformance, which points to WCAG, and adds things. We have added some certification aspects as well.
... Schools are trying to figure out if digital material is accessible or not, the certification process makes that easier. Certification on individual epubs docs, also testing the reading systems.
... The certification has not been on the reading systems, but we do score the readings systems.

JC: Schema.org metadata, do reading systems.

Lisa: There is the EARL metadata system.

JC: There have been some other efforts in WAI in the past, a score card for a particular implementation based on wishful thinking features can be problematic.

Judy: Guidelines and specs are quite different, there isn't any intent to be prescriptive in normative guidelines.

George: We do report to the developers any problems, and we hope they fix it to up their score.

Richard: How can this group help with the harmonisation?

Judy: This topic is suited to lots of different things, want to align it with the organisational goals. Ways people could help: Translation is one of the most helpful things, people who can start a draft, and someone that is happy to do the lead translation role. Getting different stakeholders involved, so it isn't only technical people that might not go well with disability groups. There is very straightforward things that can be done.
... Also, keeping track of things that are coming up around the world.
... We need more from education & outreach point of view, but need help getting that to a good quality. Having people give us early warning of upcoming accessibility standards around the world can save years of effort fixing those later.
... With the standards roadmap we haven't had time to give the oversight, could do with help on that.
... This would be with Ralph, which would be complementary to the rest of the W3C's aims.

<Zakim> jeanne, you wanted to answer James that Mobile Task Force ran into the problem early on, that Mobile is too technology dependent

<richardschwerdtfeger> ack

Jeanne: Mobile accessibility task force is aware of your concern, it isn't too focused on that.

<richardschwerdtfeger> ack

<AWK> AC: when we test mobile apps we use WCAG + platform guidance

<jcraig> alastairc: when we test mobile app, we use wcag + platform (e.g. Apple's) works well

<AWK> AC: we should be thinking about that for the silver project

Judy: People are looking for the term mobile, even though our guidelines may not be termed like that.

<jcraig> alastairc: others do that too i believe?

<MichaelC> s/shadi, judy brewer, matt king, richs, awk, john kirkwood, chris wilson, katie, michael cooper, ralph s, alex russel, tantek c, alastair campbell, lisa seeman, george kerscher, mhakkinen, jason white/scribe: mhakkinen/

WAI standards harmonization roadmap

21 Sep 2016

Attendees

Contents

Summary of Action Items

Summary of Resolutions

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