IRC log of wai-wcag on 2004-12-16

Timestamps are in UTC.

21:07:38 [RRSAgent]
RRSAgent has joined #wai-wcag
21:07:45 [bcaldwell]
RRSAgent, make log world
21:09:48 [gregg]
gregg has joined #wai-wcag
21:10:52 [bcaldwell]
TTF update:
21:11:08 [bcaldwell]
working through straw polls on tests in test suites
21:11:30 [bcaldwell]
test files are raising questions for techniques
21:12:19 [bcaldwell]
polling process needs some work, but we'll continue to use it
21:12:40 [bcaldwell]
planning to do additional polling pretty quickly
21:13:06 [bcaldwell]
test cases will, by default be XHTML 1.0 unless there is a specific reason to use XHTML 1.1 or HTML 4.0
21:13:37 [bcaldwell]
need to find ways to move through test files more quickly, but easy to get bogged down in issues
21:14:26 [bcaldwell]
also reviewed places where success criteria have no techniques and made a few assignments
21:14:43 [bcaldwell]
wednesday calls cancelled for the next 2 weeks, but will continue working on action items and test files
21:15:35 [bcaldwell]
gv - overall progress
21:15:45 [bcaldwell]
3 guidelines in need of technology development or we'll have to go backwards
21:16:10 [bcaldwell]
epilepsy, contrast, cascading dictionaries
21:16:24 [bcaldwell]
cascading dictionaries need a standard
21:16:57 [bcaldwell]
we're [Trace] is making progress on both contrast and epilepsy tools, but need to find funding to help testing epilepsy tool
21:17:19 [bcaldwell]
pattern thresholds are being revisited in context of international standards
21:18:21 [bcaldwell]
other guidelines, we're coming along and starting to narrow things down
21:18:42 [bcaldwell]
may find that there are a number of techniques and test suites that need cleanup
21:19:24 [bcaldwell]
more work to be done, but we're getting more public comments that are positive (I like this, this is a lot better, etc.)
21:20:06 [bcaldwell]
gv- biggest concerns I have are that we have a bunch of tests, but not enough tests to account for our checkpoints
21:21:07 [bcaldwell]
gv - checklists and tests, think of them as being hand and glove
21:21:42 [bcaldwell]
we've made good progress - thanks to all who have taken issues and worked on them to get them closed
21:22:10 [bcaldwell]
we'll need to be doing more of that - I'd like to ask those who didn't compile issues, to read them in advance and we'll try to limit discussion on calls quite a bit in the future
21:22:54 [bcaldwell]
sometimes many of us are reviewing issues for the first time on the call (true for all of us), but if we don't review them ahead of time, it will be hard to make progress
21:23:28 [bcaldwell]
have cleared hundreds of comments and have many new ones to deal with - we're doing a better job of getting our public drafts out
21:24:02 [bcaldwell]
worried about 3.1, 4.1 and 4.2 - we seem to be grabbing at something, but not sure we have our arms around it yet. need to be careful about the implications of it
21:24:23 [bcaldwell]
suggest that everyone read the draft carefully as though you have to apply it to your own site
21:25:06 [bcaldwell]
comments or questions about status?
21:25:12 [bcaldwell]
ack Jason
21:25:46 [bcaldwell]
my comments went to the list about large issues in guidelines - these will keep us busy, or keep us thinking - and need to be resolved
21:26:09 [bcaldwell]
has been an excellent year of work, considerable progress made, we need to keep forward motion going so we can get through the W3C process
21:26:36 [bcaldwell]
gv - 2 internal and a public draft coming up
21:26:51 [bcaldwell]
next internal - week of 17 Jan.
21:26:57 [bcaldwell]
second internal - end of Feb.
21:27:09 [bcaldwell]
next public - March.
21:27:21 [bcaldwell]
gv - still trying to work out details about where next face to face meetings will be held
21:28:05 [bcaldwell]
techniques/tests/checklists need a particular emphasis and we may start to devote some Thursday call time to get more discussion going in this area and or schedule some extended face to face meetings or worksessions
21:28:31 [bcaldwell]
gv - I've also taked with editors of various documents about getting together to work on format for how documents fit together and pieces fit together
21:28:50 [bcaldwell]
we may do that to try to bring something to group to consider
21:29:40 [bcaldwell]
gv - what needs to happen is that we have some open issues to look at now, but also want to see if people can volunteer to take on any areas that are open issues
21:31:30 [Zakim]
+??P14
21:31:56 [bcaldwell]
updated URI for broken link in agenda - http://tinyurl.com/659bv
21:32:12 [bcaldwell]
technical plenary - Feb. 28 - Mar. 4
21:32:30 [bcaldwell]
zakim, ??P14 is Kerstin
21:32:30 [Zakim]
+Kerstin; got it
21:33:19 [Kesh]
Kesh has joined #wai-wcag
21:36:53 [bcaldwell]
gv - guideline assignments - can people "re-up" to review new issues that come up?
21:37:03 [bcaldwell]
volunteers for guideline 4.2?
21:37:15 [bcaldwell]
action loretta: review guideline 4.2 open issues
21:37:48 [gregg]
q?
21:38:00 [gregg]
ack l
21:38:56 [bcaldwell]
gv - would like to touch on 2 things today
21:39:05 [bcaldwell]
1. any thoughts/comments on checklists, tests etc.
21:39:35 [bcaldwell]
in particular, anyone who would like to help Michael in looking at creating checklist items for the areas where we don't have anything yet
21:40:40 [Yvette_Hoitink]
q+ to say "I made some remarks about the techniques when proofreading"
21:40:42 [bcaldwell]
action david: help TTF group with missing checklist item creation
21:41:02 [Yvette_Hoitink]
q-
21:41:19 [bcaldwell]
gv - review should include asking whether the set is necessary and sufficient
21:42:11 [bcaldwell]
mc - so far, we only have test files for HTML and need to create tests for other technologies
21:42:16 [bcaldwell]
gv - and general techniques
21:43:13 [bcaldwell]
js - have already been doing some of this
21:43:47 [bcaldwell]
gv - tricky part is figuring out the set of things that actually fulfill the success criteria of the guidelines
21:44:09 [bcaldwell]
in the end, the whole group is going to have to be happy with what turns out to be the checklist items, because they will define what this all means
21:44:33 [bcaldwell]
gv - the other thing I wanted to do was enter into a user agent discussion
21:44:51 [bcaldwell]
as we go forward, there are a number of observations that have been made about what a UA is and what is avaialble through UA
21:45:12 [bcaldwell]
the impression i'm getting from various comments is that the issue is a somewhat complicated one
21:47:10 [bcaldwell]
al - issue with disabled form controls
21:47:30 [bcaldwell]
problematic because UA may skip over important information
21:52:02 [gregg]
ack j
21:52:42 [bcaldwell]
js - what are the expectations with respect for user agent support for markup technologies other than HTML - does a UAAG 1.0 user agent by definition support RDF, MathML, SVG, etc.
21:53:14 [bcaldwell]
mm - it supports what it says it supports - if a user agent is an HTML browser, then it is an HTML browser, we don't assume support for anything other than what the UA claims support for
21:53:34 [Kesh]
are we also assuming that ATAG is part of our baseline, and if so, are we including review of current draft of ATAG 2.0 in our edits and review?
21:53:56 [bcaldwell]
js - then one of the things we should advise developers who use MathML, then somewhere they need to say to users, you need a UA that supports MathML
21:54:19 [bcaldwell]
js - calling for UAAG 1.0 conformance, does not automatically imply support for specific technologies
21:55:12 [bcaldwell]
gv - what are people's thoughts about when we say UA needs to conform to it, etc, what are we considering an acceptable UA?
21:55:27 [Yvette_Hoitink]
q+ to say "any UA that meets UAAG 1"
21:55:47 [bcaldwell]
gv - are we talking about any UA at any price in any language or is baseline meant to be those UA available in a widespread fashion and at a reasonable price so that we're saying that the web should be accessible to most people.
21:55:50 [bcaldwell]
ack Jason
21:56:24 [bcaldwell]
think the guidelines should stay out of that question and focus on technical aspects of accessibility
21:56:47 [bcaldwell]
should be strong informative advice against relying on technologies that are not widespread because it will limit audience
21:57:33 [bcaldwell]
draws a line between policy and technical accessibility - if its possible to implement the guidelines and there are UA that support it, then that should be sufficient as far as the guidelines are concerned
21:57:54 [Michael]
q+
21:58:08 [bcaldwell]
gv - ex. I have a $40,000 browser that can render images as text, does that mean we should remove reqs. for text alternatives because that browser provides access?
21:58:09 [Michael]
q-
22:00:11 [bcaldwell]
js - not a good example, would need to switch it to say that if we had a $40,000 UAAG conformant browser, then an author could claim conformance ... outside the scheme of a technical specification - may be laws that address cost, etc. under anti-discrimination law and other countries draw those lines differently (an area where you'd get fragmentation if it were in the guidelines)
22:00:21 [Michael]
My perspective on user agent is the guidelines should describe the _experience_ the user should have. The techniques should describe how to create that experience. If a $40,000 browser is available and all users in your target audience have it, then that's all you need to do. Techniques will describe how to meet the functional requirements for the majority of users having access to...
22:00:23 [Michael]
...mainstream browsers, and will evolve as browser support evolves.
22:00:24 [Michael]
I think this supports Jason's statements.
22:00:39 [Yvette_Hoitink]
bye
22:00:47 [Zakim]
-Michael_Cooper
22:02:06 [Yvette_Hoitink]
ack y
22:02:07 [Zakim]
Yvette_Hoitink, you wanted to say "any UA that meets UAAG 1"
22:02:09 [bcaldwell]
gv - these are not technical specs, they are civil rights guidelines, based on equity of access and are guidelines rather than what would normally be thought of as tech. specs. want to be careful that we don't fool ourselves into thinking we can walk away from these issues
22:03:27 [Kesh]
how many times are we going to visit this issue -- we voted on this, and the issue should be closed, no?
22:03:32 [bcaldwell]
yh - answer to question of what we thing baseline should be is UAAG 1.0, like we said in dublin, we don't want to burden authors with things that are not their responsibility. I fully realize that will leave some people in the cold until UA conform to UAAG, but I think it's the only way to get somewhere in the long run. UA authors take their responsibility and authors to create content that can be interpreted by a UAAG compliant UA.
22:03:41 [Yvette_Hoitink]
zakim, mute me
22:03:41 [Zakim]
Yvette_Hoitink should now be muted
22:04:04 [Yvette_Hoitink]
Kesh: It's very <span lang="fr">Deja-vu</span>
22:04:29 [bcaldwell]
mm - agree with Jason and Yvette - it's a civil rights and access doc., but in grand scheme, it's also a delineation of responsibilities ... that needs to be taken into account, there are certain things that are clearly the responsibility of a browser vendor and clearly the responsibility of a content provider
22:05:16 [bcaldwell]
mm - in case of $40,000 browser, the important factor is that it's cheaper for content developer to spend an hour of company time to make it accessible than it is for the user to spend the $40,000. In light of that, most reasonable approach is to take UAAG as baseline
22:05:22 [Yvette_Hoitink]
ack m
22:05:24 [Yvette_Hoitink]
ack a
22:05:26 [bcaldwell]
al - I'd echo that because it is hard to regulate
22:06:17 [bcaldwell]
only available to limited audience for a limited range of content, that could be the case.
22:07:44 [bcaldwell]
gv - one of the ways I think of addressing both aspects is to create a report and to create our repair document so that we say that dividing up the responsibilities, this is as far as authors should have to go and this is what UA should be doing. then do a report that says, at this price point, these are the UA that exist and this is how much of UAAG that they meet and these are the repair techniques that would be required (in addition to 2.0) to mee
22:08:21 [Yvette_Hoitink]
q+ to say "totally against temporary bridges"
22:08:32 [Yvette_Hoitink]
q-
22:08:38 [bcaldwell]
then at higher price point, we could do the same analysis -- then we could leave it to policy makers because we have described what shoudl be as well as reality and leave it to policy makers to decide whether they are going to jump up and down on UAAG or on Authors or whether they are going to leave the gap
22:09:33 [bcaldwell]
may be a good mechanism for policy makers or anyone to put pressure or provide support to get user agents into shape so we don't have a million authors working to make up for problems with user agents
22:10:09 [bcaldwell]
gv - as we're doing checklists and things like this, I think it would be good to begin identifying the contents of UAAG shortfall report and author repair strategies
22:10:27 [bcaldwell]
repair strategies is where we put all the until user agent stuff
22:10:34 [Yvette_Hoitink]
q+ to say "against repair strategies"
22:10:35 [MattSEA]
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22:10:39 [bcaldwell]
ack Jason
22:12:00 [bcaldwell]
yes, that works, also addresses issues I was concerned about which was that if we prescribe availability in guidelines, then it would be problematic for different groups. in order to avoid describing something that would be inappropriately putting burden in different places, I think we have to do what Gregg described.
22:12:34 [bcaldwell]
if you're writing a list of repair strategies and a list of shortfalls, that would have to be done for each technology
22:12:37 [Yvette_Hoitink]
ack y
22:12:38 [Zakim]
Yvette_Hoitink, you wanted to say "against repair strategies"
22:13:02 [Kesh]
Ben, where is Wendy today?
22:13:44 [bcaldwell]
I'm totally against repair strategies - we should be concerned with authors responsibility and not user agent responsibility -- I don't think we need to provide repair strategies because risk of temporary bridge is that you never get a real one
22:14:22 [Kesh]
thank you, Yvette -- both comments are very well spoken -- we have too much work! and building a temporary bridge will only result in
22:14:28 [bcaldwell]
another reason is that I think we have a major workload ahead of us and if we need to document all the shortfalls and repair stragegies, that is a lot of work, new UA version are coming out as we speak and that would be a lot of work
22:14:44 [Kesh]
never building the proper bridge -- this is not part of our work
22:14:48 [Kesh]
q+ kerstin
22:15:26 [MattSEA]
q+
22:16:01 [Yvette_Hoitink]
zakim, mute me
22:16:01 [Zakim]
Yvette_Hoitink should now be muted
22:16:01 [bcaldwell]
gv - problematic to put out guidelines where we know in advance that they won't work
22:17:16 [bcaldwell]
kg - ditto - I thought we had basically closed this issue in dublin - frustrating to see us review issues I thought we had closed down - we don't want to build a temporary bridge that will result in UA never meeting UAAG - also think we have more than our fair share of work and I don't see WCAG 2.0 coming out in the next 2 years if we decide to add all of this on our plate
22:17:51 [ChrisR]
ChrisR has left #wai-wcag
22:17:54 [bcaldwell]
gv - we decided to tentatively use UAAG 1.0 as baseline and concept of having repair strategies outside of WCAG were also discussed, so this is not retreading decisions that were made and taken off the table
22:17:59 [Zakim]
-ChrisR
22:18:01 [bcaldwell]
ack Matt
22:18:50 [bcaldwell]
mm - concerned about not wanting to put out guidelines that don't result in accessible content - ? you need to ask is "accessible to whom?"
22:19:50 [bcaldwell]
we've seen what happens with WCAG 1.0, what happens that as the browsers evolve, you end up with things that could have been done right, but were done wrong because we encouraged authors to cover for UA - I think pressure should be brought to bear on UA
22:20:14 [bcaldwell]
we need to pay attention to the fact that as time goes on, content will stay there for a good long time
22:20:34 [bcaldwell]
gv - think we unanimous on that
22:20:36 [bcaldwell]
ack John
22:20:40 [bcaldwell]
ack kerstin
22:20:40 [Kesh]
ack k
22:21:20 [bcaldwell]
js - question on w3c process - if there are currently no UAAG 1.0 conforming user agents (completely), will it be possible for us to meet W3C reqs. for implementation experience?
22:21:49 [bcaldwell]
gv - think the answer is yes, what needs to be shown is that you can write a page that follows WCAG 2.0, not that the page would be accessible
22:22:21 [bcaldwell]
mm - 1. major browsers out there right now, while they don't completely conform to the myriad checkpoints and test suites in UAAG at level A, they are all really close.
22:22:34 [bcaldwell]
gv - thought when we went over it each were missing some key elements
22:22:54 [Yvette_Hoitink]
q+ to say "every UAAG checkpoint is covered by at least 1 UA"
22:23:10 [bcaldwell]
mm - in my discussions with UA developers, they are getting substantially closer with each release. other issue is that there are no browsers that conform to HTML 4.0, which is a 7 year old spec.
22:23:30 [gregg]
q+
22:24:05 [bcaldwell]
mm - difficult to find someone to do 100% unless they are working from our playbook and many UA developers are now working more closely with us
22:24:17 [bcaldwell]
ack Jason
22:25:37 [bcaldwell]
1 shortfalls are going to differ depending on UA and whether shortfalls have a significant impact if authors write according to spec. not sure what else there is to talk about until baseline report is complete.
22:25:38 [Yvette_Hoitink]
ack y
22:25:39 [Zakim]
Yvette_Hoitink, you wanted to say "every UAAG checkpoint is covered by at least 1 UA"
22:26:22 [bcaldwell]
yh - wanted to point out that every UAAG checkpoint has a UA that meets it, just no single browser that does it
22:27:38 [Yvette_Hoitink]
zakim, mute me
22:27:38 [Zakim]
Yvette_Hoitink should now be muted
22:28:05 [bcaldwell]
gv - as we go forward, we need to remember that it has to pass muster, other way it can fail is through public comments and feedback
22:28:29 [bcaldwell]
gv - voluntary standards and market pressure is one world, but we're in the world where market pressure doesn't work
22:29:49 [bcaldwell]
dm - 2 issues, the issue of practicality of having a repair document and the other is the theology of building a temporary bridge - 2 separate issues. I think we can have a messy repair document (without putting a lot of resources into it.) In the meantime, this is what we have in terms of guidelines
22:29:55 [bcaldwell]
gv - thanks everyone
22:30:00 [Yvette_Hoitink]
zakim, unmute me
22:30:00 [Zakim]
Yvette_Hoitink should no longer be muted
22:30:13 [bcaldwell]
no meeting for the next 2 weeks, so everybody have a very very merry...
22:31:06 [bcaldwell]
we're going to hit the new year and would like to have a new draft out toward the end of Jan. - we also have techniques and tests working groups - tough for them to get things done when our guidelines keep changing, so the faster we can get guidelines as clean as we can, the better off that work is.
22:32:02 [bcaldwell]
thanks to everyone who spent so much time on action items this last year, we'll see you in the New Year
22:32:35 [Zakim]
-[Microsoft]
22:32:50 [Zakim]
-Alex_Li
22:33:17 [Zakim]
-Loretta_Guarino_Reid
22:33:18 [Zakim]
-Becky_Gibson
22:33:18 [Zakim]
-Matt
22:33:19 [Zakim]
-Yvette_Hoitink
22:33:21 [Zakim]
-Andi_Snow_Weaver
22:33:23 [Zakim]
-Kerstin
22:33:23 [bcaldwell]
RRSAgent, bye
22:33:23 [RRSAgent]
I see 2 open action items:
22:33:23 [RRSAgent]
ACTION: loretta to review guideline 4.2 open issues [1]
22:33:23 [RRSAgent]
recorded in http://www.w3.org/2004/12/16-wai-wcag-irc#T21-37-15
22:33:23 [RRSAgent]
ACTION: david to help TTF group with missing checklist item creation [2]
22:33:23 [RRSAgent]
recorded in http://www.w3.org/2004/12/16-wai-wcag-irc#T21-40-42
22:33:25 [Zakim]
-Gregg_and_Ben
22:33:27 [Zakim]
-John_Slatin