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EOWG Minutes, December 1, 2000

Participants

Schedule of  Upcoming Meetings

Friday December 15, 2000, 8:30a.m. to 10:30 a.m US EST.

Outreach Updates

HB: ERT WG & PFWG are meeting 2000-12-04 and -5 at XML 2000. Tim Berners-Lee is keynoting the conference, speaking on "RDF and the Semantic Web." The "Device-Independent Web Accessibility" track is 2000-12-05, http://www.gca.org/attend/2000_conferences/XML_2000/accessibility.htm Wendy Chisholm will review the WAI's XML Accessibility Guidelines. The Wireless Application Protocol is the afternoon subject with four speakers. I hope they will acknowledge the WAI work.   

JB: W3 Voice Browser group and WAP folks have some awareness of Web accessibility issues. 

WL: Phone companies are into proprietary features, not WAI. WAP, Phone.com, Nokia, and Eriksson all have separate versions. Incompatible. Jakob Neilsen published dissatisfaction with the WAP. [See http://www.useit.com/alertbox/20000709.html] His message: there has been oversell on telephone browsing using WAP. Browsing on TV. Difference between web phones vs plain phones. Device-independent authoring group at W3C is not public.

JB: Believe this is being chartered. It may be publicly visible soon.

WL: See his Device-independent authoring website: www.diap.net This is his outreach update. Deal with how product can be made more accessible. For live-image validation, make XHTML, and include accessibility features. One example of feedback given: Liveimage shareware makes the construction of client-side images map easy. See www.liveimage.com.

HB: The ER group is designing/evaluating a new Accessibility Description Language (ADL) as a recommendation within the Guidelines, to include statements about accessibility by the author as metadata within documents.

WL: ADL may be a XHTML application. A Head content can point to an RDF document. Shawn Palmer is leading this with major contributions.

HBj: Initiative for "best on the net" Danish website Prisvinderne år 2000.

     bestpaanettete.dk/nyheder.asp?page=document&objno=468

They will check about 6000 public websites every year. This website appeared yesterday. None of the first three prizewinners had anything to do with accessibility. The tender expects to require accessibility. Do have a working group, and will assert this need more effectively.

JB: W3C Advisory Committee Meeting highlights: The W3C advisory committee has one member per member organization. Several hundred were present, including representatives from many new member organizations. Each domain gave its overview. WAI was well received. Our domain highlight was EOWG work. Daniel Dardailler and JB gave summary, JB and Marja-Riitta Koivunen showed current work, including reorganization of the WAI home page. Work in progress: Annotated Resource Listing, and How People with Disabilities Use the Web. Training Resources lead to lots of follow-up -- how use these resources internally. Several requested potential training. A company developing a certified training program wished that WAI would do the certification. Another in Europe is interested. Showed start of the video material from WGBH on "Web Sites That Work." People wished to see more. It should be on our web site, and will be there shortly. One company may help with streaming it from our site. Italy and Norway are working on developing policy. Other national and state governments are requesting information on how to reference our guidelines in policies. Need a page on guidelines for including references in policy documents to these. Marja showed accessibility in SVG based on the W3C Note http://www.w3.org/TR/SVG-access/.

Interest was expressed in building business case for web design companies on importance of web accessibility. This is a strategic advantage when presented to a client. Some companies are interested in sharing their corporate experience in adding accessibility. Several companies are willing to be test cases.

Gallery and ER Tools need to be better resource suite, with guidance page on "Making a Web Site Accessible."

Showed a WGBH captioned movie trailer "Phantom Menace" that Lucas Films might host an example of an accessible multi-media clip. Trying to get companies to do similar.

Peter Bosher recently updated the accessibility page.

Daniel Dardailler showed a list of all member organizations in W3C with an interface to select a member organization and see on the right site, a Lynx emulated version of their site home page.

More Outreach

JB: WAI does have permission to augment staff, and are seeking a new addition to the technical writing staff, and also another position for WAI.

WL: "Programmers are cheaper than lawyers!"

JB: Growing awareness that there have been law suites on accessibility in EU, this is happening. In US and Canada, people are more aware.

JB: We need ways to better highlight information on Policy Page.  See http://europa.eu.int/comm/information_society/eeurope/actionplan/actline2c_en.htm for how Information Society eEurope is addressing Participation for all in the knowledge-based economy.  Deadline for public sector website achievement of accessibility for European Commission and Member States to adopt WAI guidelines for public websites  is end of 2001. Not specific to level of compliance.

WL: These apply to government, not commercial websites. 

HB: "Policy" still doesn't suggest to me the content. Suggest replace by "Governmental policies" or "Accessibility Laws."

JB: Netherlands, Italy, and Norway have contacted WAI for assistance in getting activity going. Some also request information on ADA (which applies beyond government as well.)

WL: Supreme Court case "Garret vs. University of Alabama" case asks whether the Congress had the Constitutional Authority to enact the ADA. If the Court says Congress did not, individuals with disabilities may no longer be able to enforce Titles I and II of the ADA….

[from    http://www.adapartners.org/News_20One.htm]

Also see:

    http://edition.cnn.com/2000/LAW/10/12/scotus.alabama.garrett/ 

If the decision goes the wrong way, it means we may need to start over.

HBj: Meeting in Portugal, Francisco Gardenio (?sp?)

recommended as speaker for W3; JB and DD were unavailable.

JB: Digital Journey (Sun Microsystems?) meeting next week.

JB: AOL meeting next Tuesday with people working on accessibility.

JB: Thursday holding Digital Video conference with Norwegian government committee, and another meeting with SAP.

Alternative Web Browsers

    http://www.w3.org/WAI/References/Browsing

WL: EIAD Explain that there is a demo.

SS: Add E-Reader info and send it to EO, Peter Bosher (peter@soundlinks.com) with copy to Judy Brewer (jbrewer@w3.org).

JB: Intro is so long that you don't get to content.

JB: Reference "How People with Disabilities Use the

Web" in place of paragraphs 2 and 3 explanations of disabilities.

JB: Purposes: tools available, and as aid to designers to understand what people are using.

WL: Avoid "tool reinvention". 

WL: Overlap?

JB: with ER Transformation tools.

LC: Section 1 has some overlap with Section 2. 

SS: Screen readers go beyond browsers. So Section 1 and 2 separation makes sense.

Sections 1 and 3 overlap more. Section 4 emphasize voice-driven.

JB: Lots of good material.

JB: A database of tools and capabilities so it could be searchable..

WL: Will try to make a table that identifies which tools do what.

SS: Move description summary in the intro out. It is at the start of each section.

JB: No back links to top.

WL: Augment navigation (next, previous, top).

JB: Need this for resources page as well.

JB: Feedback: immediate and long-term is good.

JB: Summary: shorten intro, take out section explanations there. Emphasize simulations, add navigation arrows, EIAD demo is available. 

H: More screen readers have enlargers. Add SuperNova has speech, braille, and enlargement. Brooks-talk and Multi-web do screen magnification. So does Opera.

WL: Screen Magnification Homepage is a reference outside our domain. Are there any other listings of collections: ERT WG listings?

WL: Peter Meijer's Thevoice isn't much current use, it isn't alternative web browsing, though interest is abstract. It asserts to be useful with regular web browser.

How People with Disabilities Use the Web

    http://www.w3.org/WAI/EO/Drafts/PWD-Use-Web/20001124

WL: The right scroll bar doesn't appear in IE5. It does appear in Opera and Netscape.

JB: A teacher sent email forwarded by WL:  The LDD example needs adjustment.

WL: The Accountant example is the most engaging writing, awareness about the job conditions that affect it.

JB: It has had the most attention. Polish the writing of others.

LC: Pictures of "jelly bean" switches, rug, or bedspread are suggestive.

WL: For scenario examples, do illustrations, not photos of real persons.

JB: Some images characterizing assistive technologies.

Switches in isolation from where they are used won't get very far.

HS: Sent some materials. For some examples of images regarding braille that can support the stories in "How People with Disabilities Use the Web", see:

    www.accessibility.nl/howpeople.html

JB: Braille books, rendering of books,

WL: Adding appropriate images is as painstaking as checking text.

HS: Hard to use real product, as appear as advertisements. 

JB: Wish there were an archive of useful images.

LC: Will search for these collections.

LC: Will work on the early elementary student case (multiple-disabilities.)

JB: Need to augment links. That case needs more guidance.

WL: Clerk needs to be brought to life.

WL: Would want to do more off-line. Do column and row headers.


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