Form for AC to vote | TAG home
This is the list of nominees for the 2018 election to the W3C Technical Architecture Group (TAG). Each person has been nominated by at least one W3C Member according to the TAG election process.
Note: The deadline for votes is 23:59 ET, 4 January 2019.
The following statements were sent about the nominees (in alphabetical order by nominee family name):
An asterisk (*) indicates that the nominee is a current participant. All individuals were nominated by the AC Representatives of their organizations unless otherwise indicated below.
I am excited about the future of the web, and I believe that it is critical that this future be accessible.
As a senior software engineer at Google, I have focused on web accessibility as part of the Chrome and Chrome OS teams since 2011. I currently spend a lot of time authoring and collaborating on web standards proposals (:focus-visible <https://github.com/WICG/focus-visible>, Accessibility Object Model <https://github.com/WICG/aom>, inert <https://github.com/WICG/inert>).
In the past, I have:
Working on accessibility in the browser entails knowing a bit about a lot of different parts of the system - from HTML parsing, to javascript bindings, to the layout engine, to paint, to extension permissions. Similarly, working on web standards for accessibility means learning a lot about the web platform API space. It also, importantly, entails working with developers and disability communities to understand and empathise with their needs.
My work on web standards is guided by my belief that most web developers would like to create accessible experiences, but that unfortunately the easiest way to write code can result in an inaccessible experience. Even if developers manage to avoid those pitfalls, the pragmatics of a full accessibility story can require obscure, specialist knowledge.
For these reasons, I am always looking for opportunities to improve the developer experience around accessibility. I think we can make the easy way more accessible, and make advanced accessibility techniques more discoverable and ergonomic.
I believe that the TAG is in a unique position to gently influence the direction of the web towards greater accessibility by default, and help web platform feature designers with the work of addressing the needs of people with disabilities as a core user constituency. I would love the opportunity to bring this lens to the work the TAG does in harmonising and guiding spec development.
The TAG has more work than ever, and the next year will see an increase in spec review volume. It is critical for the TAG to retain people with a proven ability to provide expert and timely review so that Community and Working Groups have clear guidance on how to build high-quality specifications that fit within the web architecture and work with what is already deployed.
Travis Leithead has this broad range of experience across the web platform and has used his previous TAG experience to further expand his horizons and deepen his knowledge of how the web really works. Travis also has great empathy which he uses to understand the problems brought before the TAG and relate them to the needs of web developer and end-user. He's a strong supporter of gathering diverse and inclusive viewpoints.
Travis will continue his commitment to:
LG Electronics is with great pleasure to nominate Sangwhan Moon as a worthy candidate for the TAG in terms of diversity, depth of technical knowledge, and fluent command of languages. Sangwhan has been deeply committed to and involved in the technical requirements from the Asian companies as a technical expert and a fluent speaker. Such efforts will help W3C make a balanced web ecosystem without any regional distinction. In particular, a Korean public institution or two are expected to support his valuable activity at the TAG, while sometimes he has participated in the TAG meetings at his own expense only in passion.
Sangwhan worked for Opera in their Tokyo office for a number of years, working on their browser engine and porting it to a variety of devices, so that he could get a deep and broad knowledge toward the core web technology. Currently he is working in the field of machine learning, natural language processing, and information retrieval at a small company. I expect he could also contribute the domain knowledge to the relevant groups at the W3C.
He has chaired groups within the W3C and has been an active contributor to numerous standards for 9 years and counting. He has spoken and been involved in many developer oriented conferences in the Asian region, and highly values developer involvement in standards for a long time.
During the last two years(2017-2018) at the TAG, he has been helping various working groups push hardware APIs and multimedia related specifications move forward, while engaging with many parts of the community to enable the technical proposals and requirements of underrepresented communities get recognition as citizens of the web platform.
He has been actively helping members of the Korean and Japanese community to get new members up to date in the landscape of the web platform, while providing guidance to the members on how the process works and how to move a proposal forward. As a example, he has been extremely active at helping LG Electronics with the work in the Spatial Navigation specification (https://drafts.csswg.org/css-nav-1/), and hopes to expand his contribution towards the rest of the communities in the regions.
I believe Sangwhan's forthright manner, deep experience in browser implementation, and broad background (having grown up in South Korea, living in the USA and Japan, with fluency in multiple languages) will help him make valuable contributions to the TAG. In particular, he's not afraid to speak his mind, and is able to give an educated opinion in a clear and concise manner.
Hi. I'm Tess, a standards engineer on the WebKit team at Apple.
I believe in the Web, both as a vibrant, modern platform and as an enduring artifact of human civilization. It's our responsibility as folks working on Web standards & technologies to ensure both the Web's continued relevance as a platform for content deployment and application development, as well as its long-term architectural soundness and independence from any tech fads or trends of the moment. The TAG is uniquely situated to pursue both of these ends and it needs active participation from a broad and diverse set of engineers.
My commitment to fight for the long term viability and flourishing of the Web began right out of college, when I was lucky to be one of the first few engineers working on the Wikipedia project. After that and prior to joining Apple I worked at big companies and small companies; as a freelancer, consultant, and employee; on publicly-available web applications and on intranet tools; as a programmer and as a sysadmin; and on backend and frontend stacks. I've been both the web application engineer frustrated with browser compatibility bugs and lack of interop, and the browser engineer frustrated with the often perplexing compatibility constraints the Web imposes on us.
I've been participating in various Web standards efforts since 2005, and since 2011 I've represented Apple in a wide variety of working groups, including most of the groups working on the core, foundational parts of the platform (HTML, CSS, WebPlat, etc.)
I've also contributed to various standards efforts at the WHATWG. I believe it's critical for the long-term viability of the Web for the W3C and the WHATWG to work more closely together. I remain committed to fostering a productive working relationship that is best for the wider Web community and industry, and works for both SDOs.
Web technologies aren't just for the Web. They're widely deployed in a variety of specialized domains, and it's important for the TAG to help people working in such domains best take advantage of the web's strengths when doing so. One example of this is the world of publishing. I participated in the EPUB 3 effort at IDPF for several years, and I'm very excited to help Publishing@W3C bring packaged, paged Web content to its full potential.