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EOWG Meeting, June 7, 2002

Participants

  1. Andrew Arch
  2. Harvey Bingham
  3. Helle Bjarnø
  4. Judy Brewer (chair)
  5. Sylvie Duchateau
  6. Shawn Lawton Henry (first part minutes)
  7. Sarah Horton
  8. Jean-Marie D'Amour
  9. Sylvie Duchateau
  10. Chuck Letourneau
  11. Matt May
  12. Doyle Saylor (second part minutes)
  13. Henk Snetselaar
  14. Charmaine Corcoran
  15. Alan Chuter

1. Outreach Updates

Doyle - program on radio program on disability... proposed segment on web accessibility... have support

Charmaine - article published in About Campus magazine - online at wileypublications, under e-campus topic... will send URL to list

Andrew - Brain Hardy presented paper at OZ Culture (???sp) conference & post-conference workshop was well attended... gave presentation to 50 Victorian gov't webmasters... one-day workshop for Commonwealth gov't

Helle - company contacted her about web accessibility with content management system and authoring tools... request by Danish Society for the Blind for information on online banking accessibility

Harvey - book Accessible Technology in Today's Business from Microsoft...

Judy - presentation at Accessibility Forum sponsored by GSA - discussed standards harmonization - might write an outline for Asia Pacific Regional Conference on Technology Policy in Standards Harmonization

Sarah - article in NY Times

Evaluating Web Sites for Accessibility Document

Hank - about e-mail -- people want to know how to test each checkpoint

Judy - that activity is going on in other groups - although mostly for WCAG 2.0, rather than 1.0

Matt - work for 2.0 - leaning towards Techniques, non-normative - Wendy just posted new Techniques from 2.0, will send URL to list

Judy - we tell people to look through the list, but we don't tell them how to

Hank - we tell people about lots of tools and techniques, but not which checkpoints they apply to

Sarah - maybe list which checkpoints each test applies to

Matt - for each HTML Technique, it says which checkpoint it relates to

Sarah - there is a disconnect between Eval doc and the checkpoints

Judy - remind background on document: scope & purpose was to show people that you can't just run one automatated tool, instead you have to do several different checks - how to combine a variety of tools & technhiques - other groups are doing specific checks - we wanted to let people know that there will be something more coming that gives more precise details... so what can we do now with what we have, rather than scraping it all to re-do it

Judy - Does it make sense not to restructure this doc now, and make it clear in the doc that more is coming?

Helle - important that we get some of our documents finished - maybe this is an idea for another document or another group - let's wait and see what is happening with other documents

Judy - we were separating our comments into things to do now and things to do later - one of those was to turn this document into a checklist - I propose that we put Hank's suggestion in a "later" category. Does that work for people?

Hank - That's true, we cannot do everything at one time.

Sarah - Yes. I think it would be a very useful document - we're giving ourselves more work to do - to tell people just what they need to do to meet a certain compliance level.

Helle - this might be related to the issue of sites saying they comply to part of the guidelines

Judy - WCAG considers that it is their responsibility to confirm testability & put together testing approaches as they go.
final decision: make it clear in the intro that this is not intended to be a checklist

//change of scribe//

Judy, Anybody have comments on Chucks point?

Helle, it is ok with me.

Judy do you need a specific suggestion or do you need something?

Chuck a specific suggestion would be nice.

Judy in other words how can you say that without saying that.

Helle I had a question from a co-worker from the Danish group.  He said it is impossible to explain to people the importance of links in the document.  What he said is that these documents are so overwhelming to people.  It might be a special situation in Denmark that we are a small place, and he said when we make a Danish document and we ought to take that out.

Judy I think that is coming back to Henk’s question again.  If we had check point by check point process that the checkpoints of WCAG 1.0 that in Denmark might decide that certain checkpoint is not appropriate.

Helle some of the Danish websites may have the potential that IE 5.0…

Judy I want to get back to Chuck that he wanted a comment.  I hope people will contribute to this over the next few days.  Ok Chuck you don’t have suggestions?  It is sort of clarifying that is as far as it can go for now.  Are you comfortable with that?

Chuck yes,

Sarah …demonstrate a given web site meets a conformance level.

Judy I agree with Sarah comment.  Re-examining …ok I think we are done this morning for the evaluation document.  I am just making a note in the change log.  And then on the agenda.  I just sent an email to the list, about Chuck you changed to that is provided by the Danish government. 

Judy please send the language you want?

Helle I want you to say what is in the last part of the document that it is a language question not a government issue.

Chuck I am confused that you said I had changed to what you wanted, and now it isn’t?

Helle in that document when you had the strike through, you had translated …screen reader provided by the government was …gone to Danish government back to translation.

Chuck I don’t know why that would happen.  My version has not been put up the main site. 

Helle I have been looking at the …site.  It reads that…

Chuck if it went back to the other one.

Judy it ended up with a bug.

Helle I am very sorry I put them in the wrong order.

Chuck don’t forget that some of the things in the change log changed by CL are not on the web site, but in the draft area.

Judy Chuck you are going to try to sort out the documents?

Chuck I’ll try.

Judy the next thing on the agenda is …this goes back to some work that Sarah has been doing.  Sarah I don’t know if you have been getting many responses?

Sarah there wasn’t any.  Did you want to talk about the face to face meeting?

Face to face meeting, July 29-30, Toronto


Judy we had talked about some different dates.  We had been trying to do that in June, then in July schedule wise.  We had a specific place   Do we have critical mass for that?  We are getting Doyle tentatively, Chuck, Charmaine, Harvey, Sarah, Mary Frances, Henk impossible.  Do you object to the group point at that time? 

Henk no I don’t object.

Judy others? Helle I can make it? 

Helle are we going to have any other EO meetings this year?

Judy we might in November?

Helle I would have to consider whether DC or Canada.

Judy other anyone else in regard to July 30th?

Andrew I want like to start the discussion of a possible meeting in September or October.

Judy Jean Marie?

Jean Marie I may be there.

Judy Alan would you be able to be there?  He appears off the call.  I think we have everyone for now.  It sounds like we have enough people to go forward with that.  I will formerly announce this week.

Chuck hello this is Chuck, the page has been fixed.  I commented at the new change rather than the old change.  Thanks for catching that.

Selecting Software

Judy there are some links in the agenda, Sarah if you could walk us through that.

Sarah the first thing is I added in strategies, I added the eleventh item there, and all the other ATAG checkpoints, which led me to my first question for the group, do we need to have all these ATAG checkpoints?  …For the user I don’t know if that is terribly useful.  That disrupts the flow of the page. 

Andrew what you saying is they don’t care about the checkpoints, but they care about the accessibility.

Chuck would you leave a reference to the material?

Sarah this is the ATAG and we refer to the beginning of the document.  I would remove them in the document completely.  If we could somehow pull them out of the sentence. I would be irritated that I wanted some ddd and ended up in ATAG.

Andrew yep.

Judy ok I have been trying to save the previous in the change log, I need to look at this, and the software…

Andrew Sarah I think you were saying…referring back to the ATAG really doesn’t help them because it doesn’t achieve what you want to.

Sarah sure, down there around work arounds, a list of workarounds.  To be consistent I need to add in the ATAG, then I thought these ATAG checkpoints belong here.

Judy people agree with that.

Sarah I would like to remove the checkpoints All of the examples.

Judy I wasn’t tracking this, I was having problems with the change log.

Sarah I was saying that references were useful and I am suggesting we remove.

Judy I am trying to think of the rational for putting them in.  Did we need it to show that there is a ton of these types of strategies?  Therefore that it be presented more informative than annoying.  It was in there to show the derivation.  Anyone how to have our cake and eat?

Andrew move the end.

Judy that might do it.  What do people think?  ….  ATAG 1.4

Sarah what would that help the reader, what would following that link help the reader.

Judy it would take them to a precise discussion.  It would otherwise give the impression of pulling the templates out of the air.  In fact that they were derived from very specific things in the guidelines.

Helle have we got any..

Judy Helle if you were to look at the …deliverables page. 

Helle really?

Judy yes.

Sarah I could move them to the end of the sentence?

Judy I think they need to be there.  I am a little concerned about the readability of them if they are moved.  I want to make sure people are in agreement of throwing them at the end there, right now they are positioned right where they can …to me the most troubling part of the readability is …creating … markup.  A checkpoint that describes supporting captioning for the audio.  Sarah you were just having them in there.

Sarah I thought for the specific reader of the document there.  ….does not necessarily lead to an ATAG.

Judy I don’t think I understand, if you look at …this page is about software choices.  Where the authoring tool is the most relevant.  One the problems is that we don’t have enough audience awareness of authoring tools.  Maybe it is part of how it is introduced.  How do other people feel on the call?  Do people feel it is confusing?  Jean Marie, Sylvie

Jean Marie I don’t feel it is confusing.

Judy Charmaine as a web developer what is your response?

Charmaine I am not in a place to look at it, maybe after the call.

Helle I agree with Jean Marie.  You give kind of the reason of why this important and this brings awareness to ATAG.

Harvey this gives some more information.

Judy it is helpful …there is a little discussion before, …noting the features of ATAG checkpoint.  In that sense of what we are doing, they are mainly used to seeing the guidelines, would having more warning helping.

Helle is a document about authoring tools.

Andrew I sort of support the comments of Helle, the person reading this is looking for work around which is ATAG materials.  At this point we are …I have some tools they want it not conforming to WCAG.

Judy I have a weirder proposal the mind set I have it each thing that is not done here, is a clear place to raise to a vendor.  To some extent this is not perfect stuff, the first reference should be WCAG, it might be interesting to keep the ATAG as well.  To keep the ATAG at the end, so that people know what to do with the software…this is where your authoring is broken that you can complain to the vendor.

Sarah I think that is a good solution.  …back to …to related checkpoints.  I

Andrew and end the ATAG

Sarah once we establish that as a strategy that would make this document the most useful part for web developers.

Judy do people like that approach?

Andrew I would like to see it tried.

Judy any objections?  Add ATAG links under work around.  Sarah you had other questions as well?

Sarah another question I had from the change request there was one item that idea got shot down in the making.  I don’t know if you are looking at the change log.  The first item.

Judy I don’t know what happened.  Quality control in the change log.  Incorporate ...

Sarah …could this be related?

Judy don’t make a lot of words the web master is solicited.  …Whether or not we were looking for feedback from the authors or the users, the note refers that the users of the site would, would be indirect to the software itself.  That is probably...  I can try to verify that from unposted minutes.  We didn’t want site users, but software users.  Let me just ask?  Anyone contradict what I am saying in reference to that discussion? OK.

Sarah at what point in the document we add the questions about the software?

Judy I need to look back at it.  We have about a half hour for the discussion.  One other question from Sarah.  Would people to look at the questions on the list Andrew, Charmaine, everyone else is welcome to.  Let me say that on the policy document what I had done on that was to take comments that come in a very long time ago, I found a batch that we had agreed upon but had not been added.  …Those should be noted in the change log, for the implementation area.  I would encourage people to look at the document.  There were areas we had been talking more and more about selecting authoring tools.  I tried to reflect some the discussion. Last year.  We had not captured this in the change log.  I believe we were being a little wishy washy.  I chopped out the wishy washy, …I suggest people read to make sure they were agreed with log and the tone of the document.  Are there a few people to read this, and comment back?

Andrew I want to point out there is a formatting problem between four and five.

Judy I see the one that the list didn’t get dropped.  That was the third time after the two previous ones.  They are all important documents.  Sarah will look at it.  Who else?

Charmaine are Sarah’s questions posted to the list?

Judy …one other person to look at the documents.  Thanks Jean Marie.  In terms of editors Audrey had sent regrets, we have Sarah, Chuck, and Andrew can you stay a bit.  Oh and Alan Cantor, had sent regrets the rest of June and July.  Let me just see in his notes.  He sent regrets which means that the document "how people with disability use the Web" may be in jeopardy.  Anyone else interested in editing? Ok we’ll close the regular meeting now and go to an editors' meeting.


Last revised June 13, 2002 by Judy Brewer

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