Minutes from AUWG Task Force meeting, 11 Dec 2002

Attendance

JT Jutta Treviranus, chair
JR Jan Richards
PJ Phill Jenkins
LN Liddy Nevile
MM Matt May, scribe

Minutes

3.1-3.4 together

JR: Wombat draft's 3.1 and 3.2 are relevant to 43 and 16 WCAG 1 checkpoints, respectively. ATAG 2's 3.1-3.4 refer to 2, 3, 2, and 1 ckpts of WCAG 2. By merging them into "Assist the author to avoid accessibility problems when they add content or edit markup."
JT: This is a relic of brevity.
JR: I think we should consider that WCAG is more concise than before, and so we can afford to be concise.
PJ: We need to tell tool authors to check at the beginning of the creation of content, on edits, and during transformation. Maybe split proposed 3.1 into those sections?
PJ: Assisting functionality should be different from correcting. How is this different?
JR: I didn't want to state at the top "prompt for everything".
PJ: When do you say you don't meet the guideline? If it doesn't say that alt is required?
JR: I'd say it has to have the field there, and it can't be less prominent.
PJ: How do we make that normative?
JR: That's where it gets difficult.
PJ: I don't think placement should necessarily be P1, or relative priority, which makes WCAG P1 items ATAG P1 items.
JR: We can evaluate priorities on that.
PJ: There doesn't have to the prompting in the document to satisfy checking?
JR: Yes. When you have an interface to add images, prompting for alt text in that is not checking. We should be careful to describe the differences between prompting and checking.
PJ: Prompt doesn't apply to low-function text editors?
JR: Possibly.
ACTION JR: Define "prompting" and "checking" in relation to each other.
PJ: How do "assist" and "prompt" differ?
JR: Prompt is a technique of assist?
JT: "Prompt and assist." They're different.
LN: Isn't there a continuum? Prompt implies an interruption.
JR: Agreed that collapsing 4 checkpoints into 3.1 is beneficial?
AGREED: suggest to WG that ATAG collapse 3.1-3.4 into one checkpoint as suggested by Jan Richards: "Prompt and assist the author to avoid accessibility problems when they add or edit content."
PJ: Ensure "content" means the same thing as in 2.5?