[Draft] Education and Outreach Working Group (EOWG) Charter

The mission of the Education and Outreach Working Group (EOWG) is to develop strategies and resources to promote awareness, understanding, and implementation of web accessibility.

EOWG is part of the WAI International Program Office Activity, and its mission includes supporting the work of other Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI) Groups within the International Program Office Activity and the WAI Technical Activity.

Join the Education and Outreach Working Group.

End date	31 December 2017
Confidentiality	Proceedings are Public.
Initial Chairs	Sharron Rush, Shawn Lawton Henry
Initial Team Contacts (FTE %: 40)	Shawn Lawton Henry
Usual Meeting Schedule	Teleconferences: Weekly, plus longer teleconferences one to four times annually Face-to-face meetings: Once annually or more

Scope

The scope of EOWG work includes:

Identifying education and outreach needs around web accessibility, developing strategies to address those needs, and developing and maintaining a wide range of education and outreach resources.
Working with other WAI Working Groups on the understandability, approachability, and ease-of-use of their deliverables, including presentation of information (structure, style, semantics) across the WAI website.
Promoting the deliverables of all WAI Working Groups; promoting uniform uptake of WAI standards, including awareness of WCAG 2.0 as ISO; promoting translations of WAI resources, including WCAG Authorized Translations; and promoting WAI's work on mobile accessibility, HTML5 accessibility, and other emerging areas.
Engaging with the broad web communities and disability communities to advance web accessibility and WAI work.

Primary areas of focus for this chartered period include:

Education and training,
Evaluation resources,
Community engagement,
Lowering the learning curve for getting started with accessible design, development, evaluation, and project management.

Consistent with W3C Process requirements on Task Forces, the EOWG may form task forces composed of EOWG participants or join other W3C task forces to carry out assignments when under the chartered scope of EOWG. EOWG task forces must have a work statement approved by the EOWG, announced on the EOWG mailing list, and available from the EOWG home page. Task forces may hold separate teleconferences and meetings per the W3C process and with the approval of the EOWG.

Success Criteria

Production of documents supporting EOWG's mission, which are defined in the Deliverables section below.
Awareness and use of the EOWG deliverables across multiple audiences.

Out of Scope

EOWG does not intend to develop W3C Recommendations or new markup languages.

Deliverables

EOWG primarily develops "WAI Resources" that are stable, vetted pages on the WAI website. EOWG may publish W3C Working Group Notes during this charter period. EOWG plans to complete the following deliverables during this chartered period, unless work is re-prioritized by EOWG in coordination with other WAI Groups, as noted in the Milestones section below.

Accessibility Tutorials - Guidance on how to create web content that meets WCAG - update and new
Policies Relating to Web Accessibility - update
WCAG-EM Report Tool - update
Dynamic task-based guide that supports business-oriented implementation planning in a variety of contexts* - new
Step-by-step guide with considerations for designers, coders, project managers, and others involved throughout the design process to get started quickly with web accessibility* - new
Guide on interrelationship between accessibility and inclusion* - new
Videos and text narratives that demonstrate impacts, benefits, and good practices in accessible and inclusive design* - new

* Asterisk indicates deliverables supported by the WAI-DEV Project: Web Accessibility Initiative - Ecosystem for Inclusive Design and Development.

In additional to Working Group deliverables, EOWG contributes to creating, updating, and maintaining resources such as:

EOWG reviews other W3C Working Groups' deliverables from an education and outreach perspective, focusing on readability, understandability, and navigability (as opposed to technical content). EOWG will contribute to new and updated documents of other WAI Working Groups during this chartered period, such as the update of How to Meet WCAG 2.0: A customizable quick reference to Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 2.0 requirements (success criteria) and techniques.

Milestones

EOWG deliverables are produced on an ongoing basis throughout the life of the charter. EOWG work priorities are evaluated regularly by EOWG, the WAI Coordination Group, and WAI staff. Work priorities are periodically revised based on current education and outreach needs, and the progress of deliverables in other WAI Working Groups with which EOWG has dependencies. Therefore, topic and schedule cannot be determined far in advance, and some deliverables listed above may be subject to change based on changed circumstances.

EOWG priorities are documented in the Current and Upcoming Work section of the EOWG home page and EOWG Deliverables Plan.

Dependencies and Liaisons

Dependencies

EOWG will assist in developing strategies and materials to support promotion and implementation of the following Working Group's deliverables. Development of some EOWG deliverables is dependent on related deliverables of these Working Groups.

Authoring Tool Accessibility Guidelines Working Group (ATAG WG)
Evaluation and Repair Tools Working Group (ERT WG)
Independent User Interface (IndieUI) Working Group
Accessible Platform Architectures Working Group (APA WG) (formerly Protocols and Formats Working Group)
User Agent Accessibility Guidelines Working Group (UAWG)
Web Content Accessibility Guidelines Working Group (WCAG WG)

Liaisons

WAI Coordination Group (WAI CG public page) (Member-only WAI CG page):: EOWG Chair participates in the WAI CG in order to coordinate EOWG activities with other WAI groups. In the event that Coordination Groups are discontinued under W3C Process, EOWG will continue to coordinate directly with other WAI groups.
WAI Interest Group (WAI IG):: EOWG assists other W3C Working Groups in identifying issues to bring into WAI IG for discussion, and in tracking and capturing issues from the WAI IG mailing list and identifying areas where awareness and/or training resources are needed.

Additionally, EOWG anticipates coordinating with other Working Groups on education and outreach related to accessibility aspects of their work, such as Mobile Web Initiative Activity, as needed.

About this Charter

This charter for the Education and Outreach Working Group has been created according to section 6.2 of the Process Document. In the event of a conflict between this document or the provisions of any charter and the W3C Process, the W3C Process shall take precedence.

EOWG was originally chartered in March 1998, and has been rechartered four times since then. The EOWG is renewing its charter in order to continue developing education and outreach strategies and resources supporting web accessibility. The main changes since the previous charter are: