agenda in e-mail list archives: http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/w3c-wai-eo/2003AprJun/0021.html
SLH: Agenda revised: Outreach, followed by Business Case, Meeting planning.
CL: Gave a talk on the history and importance of Web accessibility to about 50 adult-high school students this past Tuesday. The students were from the technology and business streams. I'd say the interest level was about what you'd expect from a divers group of people dragged to a lunchtime presentation by their teachers. Actually, the questions I fielded from both students and faculty were pretty good.
DS: Talked to Debbie Caplan of the World Institute on Disability about joining a best practices workshop in San Francisco in July. They are possibly interested in doing something like it.
AA: Have done a number of presentations this week, in Sydney, Canberra etc. to public servants but some independent developers as well. He was happy to see the general developer community. Also some more technical presentations to client groups.
SLH: asked Andrew to review the status of the business case suite.
AA: lot of discussion at Face-to-Face and he has incorporated most of the suggestions, and have discussed some of it in recent calls. Looking primarily at the social factors section now. Still reviewing the comments.
SLH: which sections have been changed?
AA: turning first three sections into "people focused" rather than "technology focused" and if ok, will do the rest. Sailish has made some suggestions on this section (just received on the mailing list)
SP:
SP: a section on access by PWD after the introduction the empowerment should go there.
AA: he has alluded to PWD, but agrees with Sailish that we should explain it for people who aren't as familiar with working with PWD.
HS: thinks it is very important to explain why "they are doing it"
HB: an eye-opener to have these up front.
JB: A caution: in incorporating these ideas, be careful of bringing things
in on the same level - don't go from too broad to too specific. Try and keep
the overall level similar. Judy read the list Sailish provided in his e-mail:
just leave it to editor's discretion about how to add these examples [clipped
from email:
Can participate in:
SLH: any other comments?
SP: after these statements, we need to wring out the "integration" statement bring it out after this point.
AA: I tried to make the point, but it may not have come out strongly enough.
DS: question about "privacy" but we haven't used the term m;uch in EO and worried that privacy is a little confusing about how it works into all these different levels, and it would be nice to get more clarity about "privacy"
SP: sometimes one doesn't want others to know what they are doing, e.g. looking up prices for certain merchandise. Doing things independently is one thing, but doing it privately is also important. Having to ask someone what some label is is a loss of privacy for example.
SLH: what if we explained this in this section?
SP: would be too much for this particular document.
SLH: then either not do it at all, or do it unelaborately?
SP: the term "privacy or privately " is sufficient.
JB: not sure that everyone understands the point.
SLH: people who work in this area know what the importance is, but others may not.
AA: some aspects would be clear (passwords, shopping, etc.) but some may be more obscure.
JB: maybe have some general mention of general areas, and a general phrase about "the ability to do something independently means having some privacy".
DS: likes Judy's suggestion.
SP: agrees that this might bring out the point much better.
DS: all this discussion started because of Judy's caution about varying levels of detail and her proposal goes a long way to resolving his concerns.
PG: what was really the target for this document? Was it for people in companies?
SLH: a challenge is that the target is so broad. [That is why it is so difficult to find the right mix of detail and generality.]
HS: keep in integration and inclusion, perhaps making a distinction between integration and inclusion. E-inclusion is a hot topic in the EU now. PWD are a part of the people who need to be included as well.
JB: Cautions: why not just use the term inclusion, rather than "e-inclusion" to alleviate the problem of regionalization of terminology.
SP: thinks terminology (integration/inclusion) is interchangeable in this case.
AA: will have another pass at this then see what people think.
JB: would love to get the text a bit less jargonny, or cliché, (e.g. ubiquitous, etc.) bothers her we have been faulted for this in the past. Also "engender a sense of goodwill" bothers her somewhat no suggestions at the moment but will think about it. We have to be careful with the tone.
HS: thinks the tone might not translate well. DS agrees.
AA: at the face-to-face there was a comment from Judy about some ideas she had. JB: can't remember but will think about it.
SLH: we had talked about two different situations: the expense of hiring someone new and retraining, and the expense of keeping a long-time, high salary employee
SP: the statement just needed to be reworded because it implies something else at the moment. Remove the emphasis from just the point that people with disabilities can be retained better.
SLH: this refers to the "Economic Factors" page so lets look at that for a moment.
SLH: a related side note: there are some statistics that show a higher retention rate for PWD is that getting into too much of a challenging issues demographics are a difficult subject.
DS: might be useful, but difficult to find, and data is difficult to verify.
SP: the way these documents actually read, they are supposed to act as a checklist, where some apply in some cases, but not others, so we don't need to give statistical figure in this point.
JB: the further we get from talking about Web accessibility and the further we get into making absolute statements about accessibility, if we make statements across countries, we fall into a swamp.
AA: that clears up the problems with employee retention statement and why it should have been removed from the economic benefits.
SLH: we could go back to look at minutes and changelog, but she didn't remember having to remove it from "Economic Factors".
JB: will try to find it in the changelog. There is something, but it is a little vague. The idea would be to clarify this by saying "editor's discretion" but "try to keep something on this, but make it less "absolute"".
AA: will post suggested revisions to the list.
SP: in the social page we say it allows PWD to do their job better. Thinks this point has not been brought out in the economic sections page. Thinks it's ok to handle it differently in different places.
SLH: in the economic section there are links to the technical and social benefits page so we can leave it up the discretion of the editors.PG: from the point of view of a site manager looking for ideas from these documents to evolve or make a new site, when he reads it he sees three main ideas, "more informed", "interact more efficiently", "full participation", so he was wondering how to make these main ideas more obvious when you read this section? So you don't have to read the entire thing and then synthesize the main points.
SLH: Maybe an abstract, or a list or an in-page link at the top?
PG: that would be good.
SLH: we haven't done that anywhere else have we?
AA: Pierre, please repeat those themes I could emphasize them in some way.
SLH: one option: could mention them explicitly in the introduction?
SP: related to this, we need to say that it [Web accessibility] also enhances the variety of jobs that PWD have access to.
HS: heard in both proposals the need to go to a whole new structure, adding a bulleted list to both - Sailesh's list, Pierre's list - adding some examples. In paragraphs to come we could do the same thing. This would make the document better.
SLH: examples help to make thing concrete and easier to understand. There is a potential problem with example list in that some people might think the list is inclusive and there are no other options or benefits.
AA: would rather draw people's attention to main points in introductory paragraphs.
SLH: vote on whether to include Sailesh's point: no nay votes.
SLH: Henk's idea about including more examples throughout the document? Any specific suggestions about types of examples to list?
HS: we have a list of suggestions for the first sections (from SP) and are moving to such for the next section with Sailesh's suggestion. And Pierre had a list.
SLH: but Pierre's suggestion was to make it more visible earlier in the document.
PG: but his suggestion was really about listing main ideas from all sections more explicitly.
SLH: the two ideas don't cancel each other out could do both.
HS: maybe just at the section level would be sufficient?
PG: likes that idea.
AA: a little uncomfortable with these suggested changes, speaking as the editor (but not clear on how to express his discomfort) - will look at it.
HS: taking out (i.e. emphasizing) the highlights in each section is what he (and Pierre) is suggesting. If we agree that this is useful, we could try something similar in entire document.
SP: keep focus on PWD and not focus on low levels of literacy and low bandwidth.
SLH: We will bring this topic up again later.
SP: The WAI's focus is on accessibility for PWD not low literacy, bandwidth, etc.
JB: can I talk to this, with some background? There once was a document about "Auxiliary Benefits" beyond the direct benefits to PWD. We had wanted to complete the business suite but had not ever decided to throw out the mention of these auxiliary benefits. So instead of compartmentalizing benefits to non-disabled groups into a separate document, we went to the current proposal of "economic" "social" "technical" "policy" factors.
SP: thank you.
SLH: in the social factors, what if we had higher-level sections, e.g. PWD and "other". Would that clarify of obscure?
SP: Thinks social factors should highlight PWD - its ok to keep that extra material in economic factors.
JB: but isn't inclusion of Persons with low literacy a social factor?
SP: yes. But that leaves bandwidth.
JB: But the literature of bandwidth sometimes relates to social factors (not just economic or technical factors). We have continued to have valuable discussions over time and there is inevitably a lot of overlap on the topics, and we agreed that we would inevitably end up with some overlap, and we agreed to find a best home for each topic among our sub pages, but mention in less depth and use hypertext to link over to the more detailed discussion in other documents. Thinks that is why we are stuck.
SP: OK. Agrees with Judy's explanation.
SLH: Lets look at areas that have clear overlap between economic and social. In Economic factors page, also just list (but not explain) the social factors?
SP: No, just give a link to the social factors page.
AA: List would be ok.
MRK: List would be ok. A table would be good.
HB: Table would be good for cross ref.
AG: list would be ok.
SP: but the social factors mentions groups of people rather than economic benefits.
AA: will rewrite the section to make clear the difference between economic benefits to the company and socially the economic benefits to social groups.JB: about meeting in July in San Francisco - Blossom and Doyle (but not Natasha) - Judy has not been able to do followup on this from last week's meeting. Rough estimates of people to attend, and a rough strategy, and poling absent members about availability.
A three day model combining EO WG meeting and a best-practices workshop for 1.5 days. Up to 25 people for WG part of the meeting and up to 40 for best practices training. Two weeks in July where things look suitable: W-F 16-18 July and possibly another. If order is flexible then the organizers might find it easier.
BM: looked into the facilities for 20-25 people and she has already reserved the room for it in her building.
DS: there is also good accommodation nearby. WID (Debbie Caplan) is interested in participating.
BM: HP has a shuttlebus that Natasha might make available to allow a split venue.
DS: we don't know if Natasha has followed up on this.
JB: any comments?
HB: who is the focus of the Best practices session?
JB: trainers would be the focus.
DS: ATA has done something (Alliance for Technology Access - Mary Lester, exec. Director)
AA: Mary Kessler, ITTATC as well involved.
[not discussed]
JB: a concern had been raised about the patent practice language and she brought it back to a management person and it was agreed that the proposed patent language made no sense for EO deliverables and we should be able to revert back to our previous language. Judy will take it to the full management committee next week. Will bring back comments or agreement to the next meeting.
April 18, 2003, 8:30 - 10:30 EDT - conference call
JB: April 18 is Good Friday: can you participate?
JB: if we don't meet, we will need to do a lot of work online. Would people who can't make it object if the meeting went ahead anyway?
No objections.