WAI/announcements

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< WAI

Guidance for WAI Announcements

Who this is for & How it helps

This page is primarily for WAI Working Group Chairs, Task Force Facilitators, Editors, and Team Contacts. (That's the "we" and the "you" below. :-)

We want to present WAI work in a positive light. We want to get the word out in a compelling and understandable way.

Sometimes when you're deeply involved in a spec, it's hard to step back and explain it to others. Always it's good to "get another set of eyes" on announcements to limit mistakes and needing to send corrections.

WAI has an Outreach Coordinator who has a little time to help you with WAI messaging and announcements!: Shawn. This page helps us get in synch on announcements.

Upcoming Announcements

List of upcoming announcements has been moved to WAI Announcements Drafts page.

Process

Coordinate significant announcements with the Team Contact, Shawn, and Judy. (What's a "significant announcement" you ask? For sure FPWDs, CRs, and RECs. Often not interim WDs.) As appropriate, coordinate announcements with Chairs, TF Facilitators, and Editors — especially for blog posts.

For significant announcements, please put draft WAI-Announce e-mail and W3C News item in Announcements Drafts and notify Shawn and Judy at least 5 business days before the announcement should go out. If they have comments, they will get them to you at least 2 days before. If you don't hear back, please ping.

Also, ideally Shawn and Judy review the Abstract and Status sections before they are approved by the TF/WG (especially if you want that text to be used in announcements).

Who does what:

  • Blog - usually posted by author, Chair, or primary Team Contact
  • WAI Announce/IG e-mail - can be done by Shawn or other team
  • Tweet - usually done by Shawn
  • W3C News - usually Shawn sends text to w3t-comm@w3.org
  • WAI News - anyone welcome to submit pull request. Shawn usually does it.

Guidance for Announcements

Which announcements for what?

  1. Tweet - do for most publications
  2. WAI Announce (and IG) Lists - do for most publications
  3. WAI home page news - do for most publications
  4. W3C home page news - @@parameters?
  5. W3C blog - note that these get very little traffic, and usually are not worth the effort to do. yet, sometimes good to do with FPWD of a new document, or other times when need to say more than fits well in e-mail or web page
  6. W3C press release - rarely do. usually only for some Recs.

Note: Ideally these are done about the same time, right after publication.

Reminder: Update relevant Overview pages and others.

WAI-Announce list

Reminder: Announcement e-mails go to public-wai-announce@w3.org (not w3c-wai-ig).

Senders: Messages sent by W3C team will go through automatically. Messages sent by others need to redirected by Shawn or other moderator.

Lists and archives: Messages sent to the announce list will also go to the (old) WAI-IG list, which is now distinguished as the "discussion list". (For now they are only archived under public-wai-announce. Hopefully they'll also be archived under w3c-wai-ig too in the future.)

Help craft messaging

  • What do we want people to take away from the announcement?
    What do we want them to do?
    (keep in mind how that relates to upcoming announcements/publications)
  • Are there things about the context that people need to hear from us?
    (e.g., avoiding potential or addressing existing misunderstandings)
  • Is this a first publication that needs more explanation?
    (Also, does the Overview page or other pages need updating?)
  • What has changed since previous announcement/publication?
    Do we want to mention that briefly and/or do we want to point to the STOD for more info?
  • Which types of announcements:
    • W3C news, WAI highlight, WAI IG e-mail, and tweet — for most publications.
    • Blog posts — only do a blog if there is a very compelling reason to. (they tend not to get much traffic)
    • Press releases — usually only for final Rec publications of significant docs.

WAI Style Guide has info on punctuation, capitalization, and more.

Specifics for different types of announcements

WAI Announce & IG e-mail

Please provide a draft e-mail for review.

  • For announcements of draft publications for review, usually:
    • Subject line starts with: "Call for Review:"
    • Body starts with: "W3C WAI invites you to comment on..." (not including the Working Group)
  • For Recs:
    • subject line: Spec 1.0 is a Web Standard "W3C Recommendation"
    • First line: The XYZ Working Group published Spec 1.0 as a “W3C Recommendation” web standard at:
  • Put key links inline (rather than footnotes/endnotes at the bottom)
  • URI: use shortname URI at the top, and at the bottom can put dated URI in "About the URI(s)" section
  • signatures: precedent is to include:
    • WG Co-Chairs
    • WG Staff Contact(s)
    • [usually when relevant] TF Facilitators
    • (sometimes Judy Brewer, WAI Director)
    • (sometimes Shawn Henry, WAI Outreach Coordinator)
    • [we have not included editors or other contributors]

W3C news

Please provide a draft W3C News for review.

  • W3C news blurbs are longer and should be more stand-alone.
  • heading template in drafts page.
  • Do not include a link to the WAI IG e-mail unless there is important additional info in it. It's easier coordination with Comm if no WAI IG e-mail link.
  • URI: use dated URI

WAI news

Shawn is happy to craft the WAI News from your drafts.

  • Current approach is to make WAI News fairly short, as their purpose is just to notify and they almost always point to the WAI IG e-mail &/or blog post for more info.
  • WAI News for drafts usually start with "For Review:". Other template headings are on the drafts page.
  • URI: use shortname URI

Tweet

Shawn is happy to craft the tweet from your drafts.

  • Character limit is increased to 280 characters, including spaces; however most of URIs don't count.


Past announcements

(Note that not all of the old messages are good examples. Please copy only if they are after October 2019. For current suggestions, see the latest templates.)

Note: Do not use the old wiki page draft announcements, because often little things get tweaked before publication.

Open Issues

announcement pointers - overview, blog

Generally, we want the Overview page to be the main pointer for information, and the single starting point for current information. That way we can more easily address issues that come up, by updating the Overview page or adding link(s) from it. Purpose, audiences, etc. for Overview pages is at: WAI Overview pages.

For each announcement, we generally want to have a main pointer for information, and to avoid repeating information too much in multiple places. Users get confused and annoyed when we send them to multiple pages with repetitive information. When there is a reason for multiple pointers, make it clear what information is where. For example:

  • To get important background on WCAG 3 development, review guidance, and timeline, see the WCAG 3 Introduction.
  • For specific questions for this review, see the xyz blog post.

Usually the W3C News and WAI News have just the basic info and then point to the overview page for more info.

To blog or not? Blogs tend to be a lot of work to do well, and they get very little traffic. Generally, we only do blogs in select specific situations:

  • When we have a lot of important info to communicate that does not fit well in the Overview page.
  • When we want to have dated information that we might want to reference later.
  • ...

When there is a blog, WAI IG/Announce e-mail is usually fairly sparse, and points to the Overview and blog for details.

including editors in announcements

per above, we have not included editors or other contributors as signators to announcement e-mails

There are some situations where it doesn't feel quite right that the WG Chairs and W3C Contact are signatories to announcement e-mails, and there is no mention of the editor(s)/project managers. An extreme example is the Jan 2020 WCAG-EM Report Tool. That's a deliverable of EOWG; however 90ish% of the update work was coding by a non-WAI project partner and Shadi as project manager. (They are listed in the footer of the resource itself.) EOWG Chairs, Staff, and WG participants did little in this effort. Yet only EOWG is included in the e-mail.

There are several challenges, though, with how to give credit fairly across many different types of resources.

One approach may be to point to the acknowledgements / editors list / contributors lists?

@@ find GitHub issue with additional info @@

Translations

Here's when WAI has been doing which announcements related to translations. W3C Comm also does announcements of Authorized Translations.

Authorized Translations:

WCAG, ATAG, and other TR unofficial translations:

As a general rule, we only include in the All WAI Translations page translations that are reviewed and posted on the W3C website. (We have made a temporary exception for a CAT in a major language that was stalled.)

WAI resources:

  • no set timing
    • when several new translations in a language are published, do a tweet in that language
    • periodically send e-mail to public-wai-announce@w3.org about the translations in general - list of all and invitation to contribute
    • previous promotion
  • encourage translators to tweet and otherwise promote their translations in their language circles
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