EOWG Meeting November 2, 2001

JB: Agenda change, one item for discussion of business benefits of disability. Some things came up on the WCAG list some complementary, some critical. Also yesterday pinged on an IRC channel, by Wendy to try to get the WCAG group to check out our features. They had much more comments than what I expected. Since the comments were so broad. I begged Andrew to attend our meeting right now. Start with that instead of outreach updates.

My summary, there were a few different concerns and levels of concern. One was that there was there seemed to be quite of confusion about the purpose of the document. Several looked at it, while look at the title as being the business case for the web model. Some of them were worried was misleading to take auxiliary benefits took that too far and that this was unstable. A bunch of discussion around the issue of the benefits document was discussed. There were comments that we may have gone to far when took off auxiliary and added business.

JB: Hi Helle, we have changed the agenda because we received a comment from … Everyone in WCAG who read this understood the document as a comprehensive business case. I explained this was an effort to answer many different issues. It seemed that re-inserting that into that kind of document would meet some of the concerns WCAG members had. There was quite a bit of comments. The second cluster of comments had to do with some of the credibility of the comments. There was a continuum from the WCAG group. Some felt that specific comments needed to be looked at closely. If any of the documents seemed shaky the whole document would be shot down. A second part of this comments had to do with some parts of the document we claimed some statistics that were substantiated. And then this was inferred later in the document. This made several members of the WCAG group feel this made a stretch and overstated the point. Third it doesn't give enough attention to design and demographics… We have another document on demographics. The fourth category of comments was that the document was itself was harmful. We should not be arguing accessibility on the merits of benefits at all, argue on the moral grounds, … the auxiliary benefits were so weak that it would backfire. I tried to argue some changes or revised version that would meet their concerns. I think there was some misunderstanding. There were a few other comments. It still needs to be shorter, and the language cleaned.

JB: I am surprised too. I have gotten lots of delighted comments. I am going to suggest a guess I think we have some very good material and basically well written and presented. The WCAG group is right that this can be misread. It is hard for us to see. There are several things we can do to emphasize the good stuff, and more bullet proof. Much clear the context of how the document is read in. The result would be still useful to people who liked it a lot, and useful.

NL: When I was looking at the document when I was looking at business benefits. Specifically applied to corporations. How to prove to stakeholders how it benefits the bottom line is important. The technical part can be broken out, and the other is about marketing. We are talking about market share, etc. I talk about accessibility as a competitive advantage. A lot of issues about how to position oneself in the market place are affected by accessibility guidelines. It was very important to see all the technical implications of accessibility. It is important from the wireless, usability platforms perspective. I think it is a very good document.

JB: I wanted to respond directly to this. Just to bring forward from last year that we intended to have separate documents to do this, and we were excited. Do we want to go back to those original separations? The second comment I really appreciate your comment Natasha, a few comments from WCAG. They were skeptical about business concerns. I tried to say this that there were many different and mixed motivators in every one of these organizations. They may have been expecting a narrow perspective. We don't seem to think that they are not motivated by one-dimensional reasons. Does this make sense?

NL: That makes sense, a very big portion of our business, we talk to real people who may have disabilities, and talking about elderly people, that that audience responds well to this.

CL: I share some concerns that this may come across as propaganda. I've always looking at this document as a bit cynically, to present to people who grudgingly comply with accessibility. Reformatting to PDR, or use the Semantic web.

JB: Would it help if we linked to the semantic web? Help when we use more substantive information when we refer to areas like the Semantic Web.

CL: Some people like Lisa Freeman will ask us to substantiate, if we can't be verify, then say they are anecdotal, …

AA: Following Chuck, there is anecdotal, we could cite if we want to. Other people are saying that individual would help to substantiate and that people are taking this out of context. That don't understand this is a part of a suite. Just listening to your comments … I've found that people are saying they were going to do just this and the document makes them things they can do. You've got legal business benefits, moral, if you read it in isolation.

JB: Let me mention one comment from Lisa, she was saying she was pessimistic, if we did a document like this, we should cover all of the features, including the priority three stuff. We really had a consensus in our group. But what you a saying Andrew one of the benefits is to push out the edges to get extra benefits. I didn't completely follow that myself. Other responses?

LC: I think we might want to appeal moral standards, but that always work, so we want to appeal to other interests. Some of the areas may not be well researched and therefore we want to push the edges.

JB: She was meaning push the edges meaning the priority three. She felt everything in the document was a stretch.

HB: The idea of identifying more priority three checkpoints. That we mention there are more might be good.

JMDA: If the title of the document personally I prefer auxiliary benefits. We have to clarify the target of the document and if some of the technical points are weak, we have to re-write to clarify to drop them if needed. And I think it important to note the document is not exhaustive. Some people could think up other points. Other benefits.

JB: What if we tried to come up with a list of changes that would keep the good stuff, and eliminate the stuff that needs to be changed.

JB: I asked for some examples. Lisa gave an example. She was saying, in terms of having alt text in an image that potentially would give it a pickup by a search engine. There are so many other things that are dominant the wording in the title, the metadata, that in fact in a lot of paper, a lot of stuff you put alt text on, images, which have negligible affect on meaning, or have detrimental value. Counter balance the important data. It made her very worried. Her examples helped me that when we stated things in isolation could make this a target.

AA: It entirely upon the search engine. Some will look at metadata, or structural features like h1 h2, depending which are important market you are aiming at. It entirely depends upon the market. We ought to dilute the business message, and complementary to the moral.

JB: I am guessing it would really require minor changes. We have just three sentences. We say alternative text can only be found…they can help raise your image. This may be true. The fact we stated it by not qualifying.

HB: I have a comment, as I understood, are images about your sites content. I think we mention that it is not about all images. She was saying it would give a lot of not useful information for the search engines. We say that alt text messages that have content about your site. You can read many different ways. We have to think about. How is your attitude is your attitude to the document.

JB: I want to question Helle that the attitude of the reader might affect the reading. There may be some parts of the document we need to change. What are some other things to do? I would be uncomfortable, that people read and could not stand.

HB: I completely agree with that. We have to stand on its' own. We may need to be stronger about how we stand in the document. We are trying to find something that works in all parts of the world. We are different.

LC: We need to take the comments seriously. We need to make sure we have the backup research.

JB: I did say to WCAG group we may need some help. We could do an initial re-examination. We have some interesting feedback, and go back with a fresh view. I made some comments on the change log. Note in the document that it is not an exhaustive list. Some of the outside perspective could be included. I don't know how many saw Ken Bartlett's email, I responded that have the EO working group to have a chance to work on the document. We could get into a feed back loop, which amounts to layers of people responding 'Oh No'. I would want to take it back to the WCAG to see if they can shoot holes in that. Would people be interested to look back and looking back?

JB: I am not sure if we can hang there as a standalone. Unless we had this in neon lights explaining its context. This is a framework for the business case. There is complimentary case for demographics. We need to keep those moving along. Should we be trying to keep those going along right and there will be more complimentary partners to this eventuality.

JB: Just look at the table of contents. After that we said we split the resource …

AA: WCAG is meeting in Melbourne, and Lisa herself will be out here, I will try to take the opportunity to discuss this with the group while they are here.

JB: I think it would be great if you did that! One thing that you should know, that this derailed them from their agenda. You need to petition them for a hearing. I will try to join. I was saying try to make this bullet proof, careful re-examination, more realistic precise demographic, statistics. I wanted to keep saying where do we have numbers. We only numbers in the first paragraph. There were times when were using many or more substantive. We have the issue of not having solid statistics.

HB: If we went to the United Nations, or reference to them. Up to 20% of the population.

JB: That may not direct enough including people aren't included in those statistics.

JB: I don't think we can do a clean easy statistics use in the document. People have sent a lot of pieces but I can't do this myself, but might if I work on with someone else.

NL: I think it would be good to find one source. If you reference different sources, it will become confusing.

JB: There is from research that there is not single source to refer to. We have disclaimer on the UN reference that different countries collect differently. Let me do a four paragraph.

JB: Lets go on with solutions. Another thing to make a careful check of any hint of demographics to make sure they are out. Getting the demographics document moving. The next part of the meeting is about the implementation plan. I'd like to see if we could come up with a format for that. This is doable, but a few months to do this. Am I missing things that we ought to change? What is people's reaction to Ken's survey? We would like to do another pass ourselves.

CV: A quick comment, to do that kind of survey you need a double check, to get a sound feedback. You have to opinion or not, there is some consistency here.

JB: The suggestion would be to do two steps. A first pass through the document before inviting doing any survey. If we do encourage the survey, I want to have it reviewed for methodology and look it over ourselves too.

HB: It would be a bit strange to have surveys on the document? Is this a new practice to put a survey?

HB: I think it would be a benefit to use that level of survey upon the document. It is a bit overwhelming all the things we have to think about.

JB: I'll change the last thing to, once we think the next draft is ready for feedback, and we'll do the survey ourselves. I want to be careful that the data goes to Ken, and to do as an exercise just to share the data in the group. I'm not sure it is a good until we do that it is a good idea to be a public document. What about trimming the documentation's Greg sent some suggestion.

JB: I am looking at what Chris Jones of SSB technologies responded he wanted an executive summary.

NL: If we could put it in order of priority put the less substantiated at the end.

JB: What would be the substantiation piece. One of the troubles if we are linking to offsite stuff, was an external site may not be stable enough. It may difficult to do; maybe an executive summary could do that. We have a bunch of things to do to this. It sounds like recheck for trimming, Andrew, What about going through on an item-by-item list, to reword.

JB: I am looking for five people to do the bulletproof examination. Lets do some work on the list.

JB: Libby, Andrew, try to figure how stable the things are. A separate resource editing the introduction Andrew, demographics, for Judy, I will follow up with Ken on the survey. Carlos, why don't you wait on getting the survey methodology until we are ready to get it? You have some colleagues that could professionally check. Carlos I want you to do that later, and remind us when we are ready. The executive summary, can you help Andrew?

JB: I think we are done on this today. Thank you everybody with hearing these comments with an open mind. Your input will help with this. We didn't do outreach comments at the beginning of the meeting and the other thing is the implementation format we need to cover. Andrew do you want to make any comments,

AA: I think the approach works, but I haven't read the revisions, but overall the approach works.

JB: Do people want to talk about Sylvie's comments? Do people want to do outreach updates? Who has and outreach update, ok lets do the implementation plan. Does everyone have that document?

AA: I might hang up too Judy. I will send some comments through on the implementation document

JB: I do find Sylvie's' comments. She had a number of comments on the implementation plan, she did not have a problem with jaws reading the document she had questions she had difficulties with all the links, one only reads expand details, the alt needs to read which heading it is expanding to. That may be confusing. I notice the internal headings. Each section can give information when not specified. I think I should send this to the list. She works to the education field and there may not be things she wants to see. What were other people's comments?

CV: Maybe put some light details to make it clear so that the whole thing expanded gives clarity to the difference between the two documents.

JB: … It is at the end of the nav bar at the top. Do people think it could be clearer somehow?

CL: Maybe it doesn't need to be in the top nav bar. Sort of an orphan there needed later.

HS: Looking in the navigator, you can see in a links list they don't mention the alt text. Are those special ones?

JB: Really? Let me look at the source. One of the systems guys, Dominick Hazel Mazur, I think they are normal. Wait a minute there is something weird going on. You are right. What is this? I've no idea what some of this is?

JB: What is a shape rectangular doing in here? Then at the end of the anchor might be suppressing the alt text. Let me check that out. If that is an accessible problem then we have problems not just in this document. Talk to … about name shape and holder.

HS: Expand detail in one list without knowing what to expand. An add on in explorer that gives you a window that gives you help with a screen reader to read the page.

JB: Let me mention something that bothered me, when you are on a particular area, and you hit the arrow to conduct an assessment it shifts the focus that is then at the top of the screen that, but would be hard to change with this format, but does this bother other people.

HS: Some of those clips leave your cursor this one doesn't when you expand detail it doesn't stay with subject.

HS: If there is refresh, you don't expect, that is why you need some seconds to refocus on the screen,

JB: You don't have it expanded fully? What is at the top, so keep it there, and then float down and select software and expand.

JB: And that is very disconcerting for some users maybe there is a way around that, yes.

JB: Not everybody,… it is hard to see where it went to when that happens. What I am wondering, maybe we can do this another way. Let me just try something. Yeah you either get to that section top, or the top of the page. Is there anything else about the format?

JMDA: The only problem jaws mentions a number of links on the page in the same manner as you enter a new page. Not the same

JB: It is a new page. Let me explain using static xtml what we did. Dom and I did give to him the most expanded version of the page. It would strip the entire expanded version left one completely expanded, and one stripped. ...Established files sitting on the sites already. On our servers the delay is pretty substantial. Eventually we may be able to do the dynamic one.

JMDA: If the delay is too long people can read the expanded version. I don't know the rules for punctuation but you have a continuous reading voice synthesizer the fact you don't have to difficult to understand when you jump.

JB: That is problem with all our documents. We have to change a lot of thing. Change the guidelines.

JB: Let me get a clarification I can see doing this for the first level to have a grammatical level which could use punctuation On the H2 grammatically is not where punctuation.

JB: Use punctuation at the end of list items? Any other comments? On a bunch of these we have key resources listed I don't like how these look. We could make them the last bulleted item on the list. Maybe we could highlight it in some way. Doesn't stand right for me.

JB: We could provide a direct one there. Any other questions about the format? Content? I changed pretty much everything since last time I hadn't the two different levels.

LC: I didn't find enough references to educations organizations. I thought after the educational colon, I don't' think you want to end decentralized, in many countries, when in the U.S. many are.

JB: When we talked about this is done differently in each country. What would be a better thing to say?

LC: If we keep de-centralized we want to keep something that also references centralized. I would suggest taking out de-centralized. Include representative's locality, or jurisdiction. To try to make pertaining to the world rather than a local reference.

JB: Would that work? Here is the conversation I am remembering from the discussion before. What Sylvie was saying in countries where the schools were centralized? Maybe you would a team

JB: When we talked about schools, and someone looked it up on the UN they couldn't find anything. People can give us feedback later. Libby could you help fill in things later in the assessment about education.

LC: I don't know what I would suggest that would be different. Education is not mentioned in the other bullets; the word would pop up in different bullets.

JB: I think there are more specifics. They could be named. I wonder if I re-ping Gretchen and Sheila, to highlight different things. What about corporate is missing.

JB: That was what we wanted to do with this. We said we wanted more detail, and get more consistency.

JB: What are here fits into a format I would like to know how to fill it out to make it more useable. Looking for input? Do people feel that this is very hard to figure to find more information?

JB: I'm almost glad we gave up doing the modules. I don't know why filling in the details is so hard.

NL: It is a pretty good document each item is confusing with so much repetition is confusing. Otherwise it cannot be perfect because you are trying to satisfy such a large audience.

JB: I have two colleagues with small businesses. They both deal with non-profits. What about the government stuff? Chuck if you showed it some of the government colleagues fell left out?

CL: It is dealt with by the term large organizations. Valid enough that they are a large organization.

JB: There is one, we are at the end of the meeting, I've got the feeling the document is pretty close to going out for review. I have fresh in mind the feed…would people try to tear it apart before we meet again. We could call this the crash reviewer team. Not crash crack.

Libby, Jean Marie. Doyle, Carlos, volunteer to review. Libby would you take on school views? Carlos corporations and research web design. Wednesday November 14th. We will meet again that Friday thank you everybody.

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EOWG Meeting, 2 November, 2001

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