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; and to support the work of other Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI) Working Groups.
| Start date | 25 November 2015 |
|---|---|
| End date | 31 August 2017 |
| Charter extension | The charter extension history is documented in "About this charter" |
| Confidentiality | Proceedings are Public. |
| Initial Chairs | Sharron Rush, Brent Bakken |
| Initial Team Contacts (FTE %: 55) |
Shawn Lawton Henry (35%), Contributors: Shadi Abou-Zahra (10%), Eric Eggert (5%), Kevin White (5%) Update 2017: Shawn Lawton Henry (35%), Eric Eggert (5%) |
| 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:
- Contributing to the understandability, approachability, and ease-of-use of other WAI Working Groups' deliverables, where possible through EOWG liaisons embedded in other groups.
(In Deliverables table, the "Improve deliverables of WAI Working Groups" row.) - Developing support material, in collaboration with other WAI Working Groups, to help developers, designers, authors and others understand, use, and implement WAI standards, including introductory and advanced resources.
(In Deliverables table, the "Improve understanding and implementing WAI standards", "Introduce technical documents", and "Support effective web accessibility evaluation" rows.) - Encouraging and facilitating international standards harmonization through awareness and uptake of WAI standards, Authorized Translations, and supporting resources.
(In Deliverables table, the "Promote international adoption of W3C accessibility standards" row.) - Promoting WAI's work on mobile accessibility, HTML5 accessibility, and other emerging areas.
(In Deliverables table, the "Introduce technical documents" and "Promote international adoption of W3C accessibility standards" rows.) - Improving findability of W3C's web accessibility resources.
(In Deliverables table, the "Facilitate community engagement" row.) - Engaging with the broad web communities and disability communities to advance web accessibility and WAI work.
(In Deliverables table, the "Facilitate community engagement" row.) - Identifying education and outreach needs around web accessibility, developing strategies to address those needs, and creating and maintaining a wide range of education and outreach resources to meet identified needs.
Primary areas of focus for this chartered period include:
- Education and training,
- Standards harmonization,
- 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 and tools supporting EOWG's mission, defined in the Deliverables section below.
Out of Scope
EOWG will not 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. The following table describes the planned deliverables for this charter period. Deliverables with "(WAI-DEV)" are supported by the WAI-DEV Project. Additional information on EOWG deliverables is available in the EOWG Deliverables page.
| Purpose | Description | Deliverables expected this charter period |
|---|---|---|
| Improve deliverables of WAI Working Groups |
Collaborate with other WAI Working Groups to help make WAI guidelines, specifications, Notes, and other resources more readable, understandable, navigable, and usable. (examples of previous reviews) |
Review other Working Groups' deliverables, including:
|
| Introduce technical documents |
Introductory material for WAI technical guidelines, specifications, and Notes provides high-level overviews for managers and policy makers, and introductions for those who will use the technical document. (intro examples) |
|
| Promote international adoption of W3C accessibility standards |
Resources provide policy makers, organizational leaders, project managers, and others guidance on integrating WAI standards in their organization, including resources to encourage and enable international harmonization of web accessibility standards. (harmonization examples) |
|
| Improve understanding and implementing WAI standards |
Material to help developers, designers, authors and others understand, use, and implement WAI standards in their web projects. (implementing examples) |
|
| Support effective web accessibility evaluation |
Guidance for beginners to do preliminary evaluations, support for WCAG conformance assessment, a database of evaluation tools, and other evaluation resources. (evaluation examples) |
|
| Facilitate community engagement |
Engaging with broad web communities and disability communities to advance web accessibility, communicate about WAI work, and encourage participation in W3C. (engagement examples) |
|
Milestones
The table below lists major milestones for EOWG deliverables during this charter period. More details on planned milestones are maintained in EOWG Deliverables Scheduling. [Update: Previous link is no longer being updated. EOWG Current Projects is being updated and includes Milestones Status.]
| Deliverable | Requirements | Prototype/Draft | Published |
|---|---|---|---|
| How to Meet WCAG 2.0: A customizable quick reference - update | done | November 2015 | February 2016 |
| Policies Relating to Web Accessibility - update | done | December 2015 | on-going |
| Quick Start Guides - new | done | done | March 2016 |
| Widget Library - new | January 2016 | April 2016 | October 2016 |
| Planning and Managing Roadmap - new | done | done | March 2016 |
| Showcase Examples - new | done | March 2016 | July 2016 |
| Web Accessibility and Usability Working Together - update | February 2016 | April 2016 | June 2016 |
| Easy Checks - A First Review of Web Accessibility - update | done | done | February 2016 |
| Developing Organizational Policies on Web Accessibility - update | done | done | April 2016 |
| Web Accessibility Tutorials - complete drafts | done | done | September 2016 |
| How People with Disabilities Use the Web - update | done | done | October 2016 |
| Why Standards Harmonization is Essential to Web Accessibility - update | done | done | May 2017 |
| Training Material | May 2016 | March 2017 | May 2017 |
EOWG deliverables are produced on an ongoing basis throughout the life of the charter. EOWG work priorities are evaluated regularly by EOWG 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 may be changed, and some deliverables listed above may be subject to change based on changed circumstances.
Dependencies and Liaisons
Dependencies
EOWG will assist in developing strategies and materials to support promotion and implementation of the following Working Groups' deliverables. Development of some EOWG deliverables is dependent on related deliverables of these Working Groups.
- Accessible Platform Architectures Working Group (APA WG Charter)
- Accessible Rich Internet Applications Working Group (ARIA WG Charter)
- Authoring Tool Accessibility Guidelines Working Group (ATAG WG)
- Evaluation and Repair Tools Working Group (ERT WG)
- User Agent Accessibility Guidelines Working Group (UAWG)
- Web Content Accessibility Guidelines Working Group (WCAG WG)
Liaisons
- 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.
EOWG will coordinate directly with other WAI groups. Additionally, EOWG may coordinate with other W3C Working Groups on education and outreach related to accessibility aspects of their work, such as Mobile Web Initiative Activity.
Participation
To be successful, the Education and Outreach Working Group is expected to have 10 or more active participants for its duration. Historically, EOWG has had around 15 active participants.
Effective participation to Education and Outreach Working Group is expected to consume a minimum of 4 hours per week for each participant, and a minimum of 8 hours per week for editors. Active participants are expected to contribute to the development of deliverables by:
- attending most meetings of the Working Group that are in reasonable working hours in their timezone.
- being familiar with the relevant documents of the Working Group, including minutes of past meetings.
- commenting on open issues.
- responding to e-mails sent to the EOWG mailing list.
- completing EOWG surveys/questionnaires in a timely manner.
With permission of the Chairs, an individual may contribute only to a specific deliverable, and thus only needs to meet the participation expectations related to that deliverable.
Communication
This group primarily conducts its work through GitHub, surveys, wiki, and teleconferences. The public mailing list is: w3c-wai-eo@w3.org (archive). Additionally, Task Force mailing lists are used periodically.
Information about the group (deliverables, participants, face-to-face meetings, teleconferences, etc.) is available from the Education and Outreach Working Group home page.
Decision Policy
As explained in the Process Document (section 3.3), this group will seek to make decisions when there is consensus. When the Chair puts a question and observes dissent, after due consideration of different opinions, the Chair should record a decision (possibly after a formal vote) and any objections, and move on.
Patent Disclosures
The Education and Outreach Working Group provides an opportunity to share perspectives on the topics addressed by the charter. This Working Group is not chartered to produce Recommendations with associated licensing obligations as described by the W3C Patent Policy. W3C reminds Working Group participants of their obligation to comply with patent disclosure obligations as set out in Section 6 of the W3C Patent Policy. While this Working Group does not produce Recommendation-track documents, when Working Group participants review Recommendation-track specifications from other Working Groups, the patent disclosure obligations do apply.
For more information about disclosure obligations for this group, please see the W3C Patent Policy Implementation.
About this Charter
This charter for the Education and Outreach Working Group has been created according to section 5.2 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.
This charter was extended from 31 May to 31 August 2017.
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:
- a shift in primary focus (from transitioning from WCAG 1.0 to WCAG 2.0, awareness of WAI-ARIA, and deliverables relating to accessibility needs due to ageing) to: education and training; standards harmonization; community engagement; and lowering the learning curve for getting started with accessible design, development, evaluation, and project management; and
- the new deliverables in the Deliverables section.
Changes from an earlier 2015 draft charter include: the Scope section was clarified, additional descriptions were added to the Deliverables section, the Milestones table was expanded, the Participation section was updated, and the Communication section was updated.
Copyright© 2015 W3C ® (MIT, ERCIM, Keio, Beihang), All Rights Reserved.