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EOWG Meeting, August 2, 2002

Participants

  1. JB - Judy Brewer (chair)
  2. CL - Chuck Letourneau (note taker)
  3. MF - Mary Frances Laughton
  4. CC - Charmane Corcoran
  5. SH - Sarah Horton
  6. EP - Ellen Perlow
  7. KA - Kathleen Anderson
  8. AC - Alan Chuter
  9. AA - Andrew Arch
  10. DS - Doyle Saylor
  11. MK - Marja-Riitta Koivunen
  12. HB - Helle Bjarnø
  13. SLH - Shawn Lawton Henry
  14. SD - Sylvie Duchateau
  15. WL - William Loughborough
Agenda for this meeting: http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/w3c-wai-eo/2002JulSep/0033.html

1. Outreach updates: 

None.  See mailing list for other.

2. Review of Toronto face-to-face. 

JB spoke briefly about the work accomplished and/or work deferred.  Alan Chuter agreed to look at the Policy page.
EP - taking a health studies class now and a comment from Health Professional nurses re aging population: most shocking on emotional toll on doing things differently - why she was stressing in her advocacy: suggests ensuring reference to the aging population. 
JB - we do want to make more references to aging population, but we haven't done it yet. How about adding a checkpoint to our deliverables to review our existing documents to look for points of inclusion.
AA - agrees that we should do that.  Brian Hardy always mentions this in his talks.
MF - European community is making this a priority.
JB - Sounds like we really all agree. Lets set up a filtering step for our deliverables.  We all seem to be agreeing.
CC - Supports to her comment about people not recognizing that they have disabilities.

3. Auxiliary Benefits

JB - lets see what makes sense to do… had discussion in Toronto that lead to work items for people to do "filtering". Has anyone done that yet?
General silence… Charmane hasn't had time, Chuck hasn't done much more, Kathleen has clarified her comments (but some haven't received either message yet).
JB - well let's talk about Chuck's.
CC -  "Increase potential audience" is a better heading for section 2.
DS - agrees, CL agrees.
JB - shall we go on to other agenda items?

CL - What does "discovery" mean?
AA - "Findability".
Others: Locatability? Visibility?
JB - Can we use "discovery" but explain it parenthetically?
HB - Tough to translate in any case.
JB - How would you translate that concept?
HB - Improve the users access to the site and it would be more visible, easier to find, and the user-friendliness
AC - Can we change the sentence to read more easily.
JB - Would Helle read through for "translatability"… e.g. what five sentences would be the most difficult to translate?
HB - Will try and do that, may not be able to do so until Wednesday, but could also discuss with a colleague who is an expert in translation between Danish and English.  Worst example is wording of "Conformance Evaluation sections".

JB - can Kathleen do her bit by Wednesday… Yes.
MF - Francine is on vacation.
JB - can any others?
EP, DS - We can.
JB - please ensure we can locate the sections your comments refer to. Other members please comment on the list.

AA - can we look at "References for Auxiliary Benefits of Accessible Web Design".
[http://home.vicnet.net.au/~webacces/wai-eo/auxbenefits-refs.html]
EP - I have to leave now.
JB - Gave some background on this document.  How do we reference supporting documentation about some of the claims we make in Auxiliary Benefits?  We had discussed various ways that such a document might work and Andrew made a mock-up sample of one such model.  Can we comment?  Andrew kept the same structure as the original document (although some are currently empty). Is he confident that all sections could be populated? 
AA - Yes… thinks it should be possible with little effort.
HB - Likes it, especially if some EU examples could be found.
JB - If you land on this page, are you going to understand what is going on. Nested link in page suite Judy likes. Somewhat confused: thinks she is in argument section, instead of a reference document. Maybe put 'References for…" at the beginning of each title. In introduction section itself, thinks there should be disclaimers there.
AA - Introduction needs two or three more sentences. Help would be welcome.
JB - Any suggestions?
HB - "this is references regarding …" or 'to assist you'…
JB - Maybe combine first and second sentences and give full name of main document instead of just relative reference. What about disclaimers? We can't guarantee links are stables, we are not endorsing, providing only for information…
SH - Are there any places on W3C site that does this sort of thing?
JB - The more formal the document in W3C the tougher the regulations are about external links.
HB - There are disclaimers in the browser list that might partially suit.
AA - has added three points we can discuss later.
MK - would keep titles the same.
JB - Any other questions Andrew would like to ask?
AA - If people have references, please send them to the list with one or two line descriptions.
SH  - still worried about doing this at all. We should be deliberate and careful about doing it well, and concerned about having links to external pages that might benefit a company by having reference on a WAI page.
JB - will definitely have to work hard on good disclaimers.  The "Why" we are doing it is because we got strong reaction against some of the "vague" claims we make in the Auxiliary Benefits.  Without direct links to substantiation, the document was severely criticized. May have to do something similar to "Demographics / Marketplace" segment and in the Policy References.  Will have to point to substantiation in both those cases as well.  The Business Case has "prove it!" requirements that other sections may not.
SH - Understands it on demographics and policies. But we make lots of statements that people look to WAI as a reliable source, and the WAI is an authority and doesn't need to back it up.
JB - Doesn't think everyone would agree with that.
SH - But it (seems to) works if Jacob Nielsen says it…
HB - We are sharing what people in other segments have come up with as similar to our claims. 
JB - Suspects that the process of collecting things to link to is a good exercise, but thinks the process of scrutinizing the references really support our statements will be a time consuming effort.  Let's go ahead and try the exercise. Andrew has shown us some, but we will have to review all closely. We might even find points that we can't easily substantiate and this will point to where research needs to be done.  It sounds like Sarah Horton is volunteering for reading for substantiations.
SH - Ok, but others should help.
JB - Chuck… did you volunteer?
CL - No… I believe all our vague statements.
AA - Do we know any friendly Web managers who might be co-opted to comment?
JB - Why don't you ask your friends?
ACTION ITEM: JB will ask Wendy Chisholm to read it and comment as well.
CC - Found a "Disclaimer" section and sent it to the list.

JB - We had also been talking about Business Case suite as a whole: concepts such as deliberate redundancy, removal of redundancy, and so on. Any further thoughts?
Group: silence.

JB - San we have volunteers for references section?

SH - Should we not look for references until we know what needs substantiation?
JB - Good idea, but if you find good references, don't hold back on sending them to the list.

WL - I am very happy to see "reduction of legal liability" section in the documents.  Important to remind people that it is not just "feel-good" stuff and there is a "stick" for some people.
JB - might be rearranged, but will not be lost. Trick will be how to do it so people can find what they need without losing other stuff that they may not even know they can use. Hopes William can help out over the next few months.
WL - Wants to say that he thinks the document is very professional and he has been waiting for something like this for a long time.
JB - Lets make sure that Andrew is aware of William's comments.

4. WAI site process: Review of proposal for next steps on WAI site, from end of face-to-face meeting


JB - We got into an intense discussion about the process for making small or large changes.  Sent a message to list this morning:
http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/w3c-wai-eo/2002JulSep/0036.html   

JB - Any follow-up comment or discussion? One thing she was thinking about was maybe to have people from other parts of the W3C to talk about how the W3C site works (e.g. working in Web space, demonstrating new technologies, anyone&everyone-can-publish, etc.) because how we use our site is different from how other sites work.
SLH - others might know about that, but how much.
JB - was thinking about real general comments… sort of about the philosophy of the site.  Without knowing some of the underlying philosophy we might not be able to convince people outside of WAI (and even possibly within WAI).
HB - Are Q&A people in W3C looking at Web site?
JB - probably not… mainly at applications.  I did a "lightning talk" (informal, impromptu basis) last November at a W3C meeting about W3C Web site design and got some good commitments from different groups throughout the team.
HB - A Usability Working Group is a good place to do that.
JB - one approach for our EOWG presentation in September is to keep it relatively small scale to develop some kind of focus, but at that meeting begin identifying other areas to target, and Usability.
MF - Matt May seemed to think the Usability startup meeting hadn't been set yet.
JB - I will look for it. And send to list. Looking at calendar: oops. Not on list yet.
HB - Is September meeting a face to face?
JB - No… a teleconference.

AA - Has to leave for security reasons.
All - Bye.

JB - Anything else on site design approach? No… then lets look at August meeting timeframe.
MF - Francine and Vidya made a presentation yesterday to Industry Canada management and now Industry Canada wants to pursue more W3C work.
JB - if we don't do Wednesday afternoon meetings maybe we can get more people into Friday meetings. Shawn, what about 16th or 23rd of August for a planning meeting? What about Vidya?
MF - will follow up with Vidya again.
SLH - maybe not 16th, but definitely 23rd.
JB - what about the 9th?
Some can, some can't.
JB - Shawn and Vidya should set the schedule as best they can since they are the principles.

5. Review teams & gallery: Initial outlines of next steps on review team description & gallery cautions

JB - Hasn't been able to post discussion we had on this in Toronto to the Web yet.
HB - A complex thing - all these review team discussion - and might be better to look in-depth to comments from Toronto meeting before we try to discuss it on the conference call.
JB - Trying to post now. See:
http://www.w3.org/WAI/EO/Drafts/Review.html
Look ONLY at section " New info from july 30 2002:"
CC - is there an easy way to get rid of things we know we don't want in document?
JB - Might take an hour. Step 1: eliminate old material…
WL - Is there a way to avoid turning it into a "bureaucracy".
JB - We discussed this in Toronto and tone to take is "advice giving" rather than "must do this".  Remain completely neutral on how organizations use it.  Some might choose to do it formally, while others may do it loosly.
CC - Agrees 100%. Her experiences with organizations suggest remaining neutral: just provide the framework and tools.
WL - Agree. That is what I was saying.
SH - Do people in the WG have experience setting up review teams for Web sites.
SD - Yes.
CL - Yes.
JB - Others too.
JB - Eliminate old stuff; overwrite (update) planning; shred and review. JB will eliminate old stuff. Anyone else want to help?
SH - happy to help, but doesn't have the experience to add new content, but will review and help with writing.

JB - On the Gallery discussion: we came up with extreme caution list for problems with the gallery idea.  Thinks two or three people should work together off-line to roll together a proposal that incorporates many (but not necessarily all) of the cautions raised in Toronto to give the rest of the group something to comment on.  Any volunteers to work on it.
CC - Would work with someone.
JB - Would help since she has been thinking about this for some time and wants to move it along.
DS - Also would help.
JB - Charmane, Judy and Doyle are the team.  Will start offline.

6. Next meeting. Next conference calls on August 9.  At that meeting we will talk about next face-to-face. Possibly in Washington DC.
HB - 13th October in Europe a Metadata conference might.
SH, MF, want to co-locate with Usability, but not conflict.
JB - will look into it.

7. Other business.
HB - what about "How People With Disabilities Use The Web"?
JB - next step: circulate revised Clerk scenario to the list for comments. I couldn't publish in Toronto and have been too busy till now.  Will circulate some of the pieces to Helle and coordinate on the copyediting.

JB - remember that the meeting schedule is posted on the EO site and regularly updated
 http://www.w3.org/WAI/EO/#meetings

Meeting Adjourned: 10:30 AM


Last revised August 9, 2002 by Judy Brewer

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