WAI EOWG Notes, March 5, 1999

Time: 8:30 a.m. - 10:00 a.m. US EST
Phone bridge: US: +1 (617) 252-1038

ATTENDEES

JA: Jim Allan
HB: Harvey Bingham
JB: Judy Brewer (chair) W3C WAI
CL: Chuck Letourneau (note-taker)
CMN: Charles McCathie-Nevile
WL: William Loughborough
AC: Alan Cantor
MRK: Marja-Riitta Koivunen
RN: Rob Neff
MN: Masafume Nakane

Regrets:
KC: Kevin Carey
DD: Daniel Dardailler
Absent:
SS: Sheela Sethuraman:
SL: Sophie Latulipe

ACTION ITEM SUMMARY

• All: remember to send your conference info to Jim Alan
• Jim and Kitch to do some more work to finish off the event's page.
• Alan to provide Judy with one-pager of "business case points".
• Judy, Chuck and Geoff to discuss the curriculum time line.
• Judy will ask European community folks how they manage "official status" of multilingual translations. (See item 4)
• Judy will look at a "W3C-approved" document status to complement an "official WAI" status. (See item 4)

AGENDA:

1) Outreach & Updates

- minutes from past two meetings now available:

• February 26
• February 19

RN: doing a presentation for lots of librarians in April - On April 14, forming a team to present at the 8th annual Federal Depository Library Conference sponsored by the U.S. Government Printing Office. We will be presenting, "How to design web sites for People With Disabilities" Also US Mint pushing forward to discuss with NIB means to help increase employment of persons with disabilities. To follow up offline with Alan Cantor.

CL: Speaking at Canada's Coalition for Public Information: *** DIGITAL KNOWLEDGE III *** INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY: TRACKING THE IMPACT OF THE INTERNET - Are Things Better or Just Different? Conference is May 13 and 14, 1999 in Toronto Ontario.

WL: 21-23 May. In Louisville KY at the Ragged Edge meetings about media: will be emphasising the web as the major choke point for getting into this: impacts on the media and accessibility of the internet

JB: Probably doing Coalition for Network Information in April 26-27. Also works with Educon (National association of educators, also doing distance learning). Will be speaking at the University of the Americas in Mexico in early April at a conference on information technology and computer science.
HB: will be at XTECH meeting next week (and not at the EO call)

2) Status check on some items, w/ discussion if anything new:

• events calendar/posting

  JA: thinks a bit more time is needed to be finished… by next week.

• business case

  JB: in June we had a good outline of the business case, but the person who was to do it is pretty overloaded, but still interested in adding her knowledge to a different writer's work. Will be inquiring around for help, and may do some herself. If any one knows anyone who is good at narative business case type, please grab.
  AC: had done a one pager a year ago and would make it available to Judy. He read the 10 points from his list.
  JB: felt that that type of information would be useful for at least part of a larger business case document.

• instructional curricula: how much work to get it in sync with the updated guidelines? wait till proposed rec?

  JB: asked Chuck for thoughts on the progress and status of the curriculum.
  JB: to check internal timelines for updated release. Two chunks of time for review of existing examples. Judy Geoff and Chuck to determine schedule time to do revision of structure. March 26 for WG to walk through the examples. Final walk through in April.
  CL: must give Geoff a call to set up working arrangements.
  WL: how many consortium members are represented in the interest group? Might impact on the amount of buy-in to the guidelines.
  JB: guesses minimum 30 different companies (out of 320 total companies). The number might be low. Judy described the well entrenched communications channels that inform the Consortium members about accessibility. Newswire (weekly), AC meetings semi-annually.
  JB: a priority for Judy before the proposed rec. is to work with member companies to get endorsement and buyin.
  JB: has been talking to Kynn Bartlett and BK Delong about possibly doing trials with the curriculum.

• alternative browser page

  JB: would like to have Peter Bosher on the call to discuss this.
  Voice browser activity is being lead by Dave Raggett. Dave is very committed to accessibility issues. WE have formal liaison between WAI PF and Dave Raggett.
  HB: needs a clear connection with user agent group.

3) Educational networks for distance learning accessibility

CNI

Educause

JB: people familiar with these? No one was
JB: Judy asked Masafume about a presentation he did recently.
MN: 15-20 people involved in web design and the library for the blind in South Korea. Hopes to get some of their participation.

4) Translation of EOWG materials

• draft of co-ordination page for materials translation
• is it clear?
• is it too unwelcoming?
• how should we make materials available once they are available?
• who wants to sign up for the Quick Tips translations?

JB: read over the draft co-ordination page for material translation.
HB: Missing is the WAI/W3C overview information, general policy stuff, background But agrees that from a practical point of view changing documents would have to be English only.
JB: agrees that certain stable overview documents could be made multilingual.
WL: we must take care to avoid having unsynchronised documents (since we tell webmasters that that sort of thing is bad)
WL: do we get any support from the W3C Internationalization WG?
JB: Not for translation: they are ensuring that the underlying web technologies support international characters.
HB: withdraws his comment for the need to translate active working group or WAI pages. IT would be much too complicated.
JB: asked Maria and Masafume for their comments.
MRK: can you combine the two tables and just indicate status in the cell?
MRK: what about translation of terminology (glossaries, organization titles)
JB: Ian Jacobs will be formalizing the central reference document in the next few months and this might be a prime document for translation.
MF: his reaction: his only concern would be concerning the W3C policy, some people might misunderstand or be confused about the "official standing".
JB: on something like the guidelines we cannot have multiple official versions because it is difficult to get exact translation. Maybe we can develop a category of "approved" translation for non-normative documents.
JB: will ask European community folks how they manage "official status" of translations.
JB: will look at an "approved" document status

5) Next meetings