DRAFT Evaluation and Repair Tools Working Group Charter (ER
WG)
This is a draft charter for review by the ER working group and WAI team
only. The many @@'s note the areas that need to most work.
This charter is written in accordance with section 3.2.3
of the W3C Process.
Table of Contents
- Mission statement
- Scope
- Duration
- Deliverables
- Success Criteria
- Schedule
- Intended degree of Confidentiality
- Dependencies and Coordination with other
groups
- Communication mechanisms
- IPR Disclosure
- Voting Procedure
- Participants
Information about how to join the Working
Group is available.
The mission of the Evaluation and Repair Tools Working Group (ER WG)
is:
- to design algorithms that evaluate Web content for conformance to WCAG
and that help repair content that does not conform to WCAG;
- to increase the number of available tools that evaluate Web content for
conformance with WCAG;
- to increase the number of available tools that assist authors in
repairing Web content that does not conform with WCAG;
- to show how these tools may be made usable by people with disabilities
(i.e. conform to ATAG and UAAG).
2.1 Focus of activities
The ER WG will focus on two categories of tools:
- Evaluation - this Web content does or does not conform to WCAG.
- Repair - here is what needs to change to make this Web content conform
to WCAG. Sometimes this repair is performed by the author and changes the
source material, othertimes this repair is performed by a proxy and is
temporary (does not change the source material).
Items in the scope of work are:
- documenting techniques for creating Evaluation and Repair Tools;
- finding tools that implement the techniques and where there are none,
prototyping or participating in the development of an implementation;
- assessing the implementation of these techniques in evaluation and
repair tools;
- providing a discussion forum to review and collaborate on tool
development.
2.2 Intended audience of deliverables
The primary audience for the ER WG's deliverables is Web content evaluation
and repair tool developers as well as the content authors, designers and
developers that will use the tools.
The ER WG is scheduled for 24 months after it has be approved. Currently,
it is expected to begin in June 2000 and end in June 2002.
- Techniques for Accessibility
Evaluation and Repair Tools (AERT) as aW3C Note. This document
contains algorithms that may be used by software programs to evaluate
conformance of Web content to The Web Content Accessibility Guidelines
1.0 as well as to repair documents to conform to WCAG.
- Evaluation,
Repair, and Transformation Tools for Web Content Accessibility- a list
of tools that contains a variety of information about each tool such as a
brief description, platform support, accessibility awareness of the tool,
and last update of the tool. We will also evaluate which AERT techniques
are supported by which tools. @@ if integrate this with the AU
information into a database of some sort, how would this change this
description?
- Related Deliverables. These are deliverables that are not necessarily
products solely of this group, but are rather deliverables to which we
make a contribution. Our contribution may include, but are not limited to
- design or code for open source software such as Mozilla, Amaya,
etc.
- develop prototypes to test design concepts or promote use
- provide feedback to developers of tools, such as A-Prompt, Bobby,
WAVE, etc.
- document feedback to and discussions with developers.
- Test Suites. A series of test pages used to determine if a Technique in
the AERT has been implmented correctly and to determine where false
positives and negatives may occur.
- Minutes of meetings.
To be considered successful, this Working Group must
- increase the number of available tools that evaluate Web content for
conformance with WCAG;
- increase the number of available tools that help authors repair Web
content to conform with WCAG;
- increase the number of available evaluation and repair tools that are
usable by people with disabilities.
- Public Working Drafts should be published at least every three
months.
- Face to Face meetings should occur quarterly.
- Teleconferences should occur weekly.
- @@do we want to say anything about when we expect releases of
software?
- @@when should we aim for AERT to become a note??
A detailed, proposed timeline is available.
Group proceedings, e-mail list, archives, charter, and deliverables are all
public.
The ER WG coordinates activity with other WAI Working Groups through the
WAI Coordination Group.
The Evaluation and Repair Tool Interest Group charter is not being renewed
because discussions of the needs of authors, users, and developers is more
appropriate and already lively in other WAI groups. The groups that the ER WG
will look to for feedback and tool needs are:
- the WAI Interest Group,
- the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines Working Group (WCAG WG),
- the Authoring Tool Working Group (AU WG),
- the User Agent Working Group (UA WG),
- the Education and Outreach Working Group (EO WG).
8.2 Web Content Accessibility Guidelines
The tools and techniques that the ER WG creates are based on the Web Content
Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) maintained by the WCAG WG. To ensure that
the ER WG is interpretting WCAG correctly, the ER WG will ask the WCAG WG
to:
- review updates of public working drafts of the AERT;
- evaluate prototypes and tools;
- clarify unclear WCAG concepts.
Since both Working Groups are in need of test and example pages, there
might be a coordinated effort to produce these pages.
8.3 Authoring Tools
To conform to the Authoring Tool
Accessibility Guidelines 1.0 (ATAG 1.0), a tool must produce content that
conforms to at least Level A of WCAG 1.0. Therefore, authoring tools will
perform evaluation and repair on exisiting pages. (Primarily, refer to
Guideline 4 - Provide
ways of checking and correcting inaccessible content).
To ensure that the work of the AU WG and the ER WG is complementary and not
redundant the working groups will:
- hold regularly scheduled joint meetings;
- synchronize the ATAG Techniques document with the AERT. The
ATAG document describes the interface and general techniques that
authoring tools should follow to create accessible content and an
accessible authoring interface while the AERT describes the algorithms
that perform the evaluation and repair;
- collaborate on collecting and maintaining information about
available tools. Currently, the ER WG has a list of existing repair,
evaluation, and transformation tools and the AU WG has a list of authoring
tools. Several tools appear on both lists.
8.4 User Agents
The User Agent
Accessibility Guidelines 28 January 2000 Candidate Recommendation (UAAG)
provide guidance on developing accessible user agents. This includes some
amount of evaluation and repair. In this context, "repair" may be a
navigation feature of the user agent. Many pages are considered inaccessible
today because of the lack of support of configuration and navigation
mechanisms in assistive technologies or user agents.
8.5 Education and Outreach
The ER WG will ask the Education and Outreach Working Group (EO WG) to
review ER deliverables for ease of use and content.
8.6 Mobile and Internationalization
The mobile and internationalization groups have similar content needs and
have endorsed the WCAG. Therefore tools that check for accessibility will
also provide feedback about mobile and internationalization issues. The I18N
group has produced Charlink (aka 'Charlie'),
a character checking and normalization tool. Pooling our development resources
could result in tools that provide more substantial evaluation and repair of
accessiblity, mobile, and internationalization issues.
8.7 Tool development at the W3C
The W3C maintains several pieces of open source software including HTML
Tidy, the HTML Validator, the CSS Validator, and Amaya. Using our internal
W3C connections, we ought to ensure that these tools implement the appropriate
techniques for evaluating and repairing inaccessible Web content.
8.8 Quality Assurance at the W3C
@@discuss new activity, Karl Dubost.
- Primary communication mechanisms: w3c-wai-er
mailing list and ER home
page.
- Phone meetings: weekly.
- Face-to-face meetings quarterly.
- Communication with W3C: WAI CG.
- Communication with the developer community: direct involvement in
working group (invited experts) and liaisons to other W3C groups.
- Communication with disability community: direct involvement in working
group (invited experts).
- Communication with research community: direct involvement in working
group (invited experts).
- Communication with W3C Member organizations: Member newswire &
newsletter
- Communication with the public: WAI Education & Outreach WG, member
presentations, and the group home page.
The purpose of the ER WG is to produce public documents and tools available
royalty-free to everyone, following W3C standard IPR terms. Therefore, anyone
commenting in the ER WG will be considered to offer these ideas as
contributions to the ER WG documents and tools. Organizations with IPR in
areas related to the Techniques for Accessibility Evaluation and Repair tools
must disclose IPR as described in the W3C Process regarding IPR and W3C's IPR
fact sheet. Invited experts are required to disclose IPR claims in the same
manner as individuals from W3C Member organizations.
The Working Group will follow the W3C
Process for consensus and votes (as described in the 11 November 1999
version). In case the Working Group is required to vote on a particular issue,
each Member organization or technical expert's organization will have one
vote.
Participants are expected to observe the requirements of the W3C Process
for Working Groups. The following is an excerpt from the 11
November 1999 Process Document section 3.3.1:
Participation on an ongoing basis implies a serious commitment to the
Working Group charter, including:
- attending most meetings of the Working Group.
- providing deliverables or drafts of deliverables in a timely
fashion.
- being familiar with the relevant documents of the Working Group,
including minutes of past meetings.
For this Working Group, the following commitment is expected:
- minimum 4 hours per week;
- remain current on w3c-wai-er-wg list and respond in timely manner to
postings;
- participate in weekly phone meetings and face to face meetings as
scheduled or send regrets to list.
Information about how to join the Working
Group is available on the Web.
12.1 W3C Members
Participation in this working group is open to all employees of W3C member
organizations.
12.2 Invited Experts
The following people who may not be employees of a W3C Member organization
are invited to participate. Those who:
- develop evaluation, repair or transformation tools,
- work with people with disabilities who use the Web,
- have a disability and regularly use the Web,
- or have general usability, development, or accessibility knowledge
are invited to participate. Participation is subject to Chair approval.
12.3 W3C Team
- 30% Wendy Chisholm - co-editor, staff contact
- 10% Daniel Dardailler
$Date: 2000/11/08 08:17:18 $ Judy Brewer,
Wendy Chisholm