Independent User Interface (Indie UI) Working Group

Page Contents

Announcements
Meetings
Current Work
Publications
About the Indie UI WG

See the IndieUI Overview for a short introduction.

Announcements

22 January 2013: First Public Working Draft of IndieUI: Events published. Comments requested by 22 February 2013; send email to public-indie-ui-comments@w3.org (comment archive).

The Indie UI Working Group is now active. Work progresses primarily in the IndieUI Task Force and on the public-indie-ui mailing list and wiki. Members of the IndieUI Working Group occasionally work outside the task force, using the public-indie-ui-members mailing list. See participation for information on how to join.

Meetings

Teleconferences

The Independent User Interface Task Force meets alternate Wednesdays at 5:00 pm Boston time. During Standard Time, this is 21:00 UTC, 23:00 Central Europe, 21:00 UK and Ireland, 2:00 pm Pacific. Logistics:

Telephone number: Zakim bridge, +1.617.761.6200 or sip:voip.w3.org
Passcode: 46343# ("indie")
IRC: irc.w3.org:6665, channel #indie-ui

When Daylight Savings Time transitions to standard time, the meeting time remains the same in the Boston time zone, but the UTC time changes. Countries that transition at a different time than North America may have a temporary change in the local time zone.

Separately from the Task Force, the IndieUI Working Group meets occasionally on an as needed basis. The membership of the Working Group is a subset of the membership of the Task Force.

Face to Face meetings

The Independent User Interface Task Force conducted a face-to-face meeting at the Technical Plenary and Advisory Committee (TPAC) meeting in Lyon, France, the week of 29 October 2012.

Independent User Interface Task Force meeting page with agenda, logistics, etc.
Minutes from 1 November 2012

Minutes from 2 November 2012

Current Work

The Indie UI Working Group conducts its work in a joint task force with the Web Events Working Group—the Independent User Interface Task Force. This allows members of both Working Groups to participate in the work. Members of the Indie UI WG are automatically added to the task force. Members of the Web Events may request to join the task force. Note it is necessary to join either the Indie UI WG or the Web Events WG in order to join this task force.

The Indie UI WG is working on the following specifications:

Indie UI: Events 1.0, an abstraction between physical, device-specific user interaction events and inferred user intent such as scrolling or changing values. This provides an intermediate layer between device- and modality-specific user interaction events, and the basic user interface functionality used by web applications. IndieUI: Events focuses on granular user interface interactions such as scrolling the view, canceling an action, changing the value of a user input widget, selecting a range, placing focus on an object, etc. Implementing platforms will combine modality-specific user input, user idiosyncratic heuristics to determine the specific corresponding Indie UI event, and send that to the web application in addition to the modality-specific input such as mouse or keyboard events, should applications wish to process it.
Indie UI: User Context 1.0, a set of properties and methods related to the environmental context of a specific user, and a vehicle to access them to facilitate a Web application's ability to adapt to the user's needs. This is meant to provide information about whether a user is using a screen reader, screen magnifier, or other Assistive Technology, and to expose relevant user settings, allowing optimal adaptation of the Web application's user interface. This has important privacy implications because the information exposed may imply facts about the user's disability, which can be socially or legally problematic if misused. These issues are important to resolve and the group will consult with the Privacy Interest Group and Web Application Security Working Group to help ensure these issues are fully addressed.

Publications

The Indie UI WG periodically publishes formal drafts of its specifications to the W3C Technical Reports page. These documents progress through a series of stages (see How WAI Develops Accessibility Guidelines through the W3C Process) and the group seeks and responds to comments on these stable versions.

Indie UI publications are also available as editors' drafts, which may be more current but are less stable than Technical Reports. Please note that Editors' Drafts:

Are updated in place frequently and do not represent an unchanging snapshot (the source repository may be used to access prior versions);
May not be up-to-date with recent Working Group decisions;
Do not necessarily represent Working Group consensus, that is, the drafts may include proposals that the Working Group has not agreed on;
May change frequently without public notification;
Include "Editorial notes" that are intended for public review and comment;
Include internal "Todo" notes and areas that are not ready for review.

The following formal publications are available from the Indie UI WG:

Indie UI: Events 1.0
- Current Editors' Draft of Indie UI: Events 1.0
- Current Technical Report of Indie UI: Events 1.0
Indie UI: User Context 1.0 (First Public Working Draft anticipated November 2012)
- Current Editors' Draft of Indie UI: User Context 1.0
- Current Technical Report of Indie UI: User Context 1.0 (First Public Working Draft anticipated March 2013)

About the Indie UI WG

Contacts

Indie UI WG Chair: Janina Sajka <janina@rednote.net>
Indie UI WG W3C Staff Contact: Michael Cooper <cooper@w3.org>

Charter

The charter of the working group outlines the goals, work methods, and requirements for participation. This activity is conducted by the W3C as part of its Web Accessibility Initiative.

Participation

The participation page provides details about how to join the group and get involved in other ways.

Mailing Lists

The public-indie-ui list is for technical and administrative discussion of current work.
The public-indie-ui-members list is for members just of the IndieUI Working Group and does not include all members of the Independent User Interface Task Force.
The public-indie-ui-comments list is used to receive comments from the public and archive group responses.

Infrastructure

The Indie UI WG uses the following tools to facilitate its work:

The wiki is publicly readable and can be edited by members;
Issues and actions on members are recorded in the publicly readable Tracker;
Formal public comments and responses are tracked in the comment tracker (a specific tracker will be selected within the next few months);
Web-based surveys (WBS) are used to collect feedback and test consensus;
The editors' source and test resources are stored in the Mecurial repository.

Patent Disclosures

W3C maintains a public list of any patent disclosures made in connection with the deliverables of the group; that page also includes instructions for disclosing a patent.

Janina Sajka <janina@rednote.net> - Chair
Michael Cooper <cooper@w3.org> - Staff Contact

Site Navigation