[DRAFT] Indie UI Working Group Charter

This draft charter has been superseded. See the approved charter from May 2012.

The mission of the Indie UI Working Group, part of the WAI Technical Activity, is to develop event models for Application Programming Interfaces (APIs) that facilitate interaction in Web applications that are input method independent, and hence accessible to people with disabilities.

Join the Indie UI Working Group.

End date	31 January 2015
Confidentiality	Proceedings are public
Initial Chairs	Janina Sajka
Initial Team Contacts (FTE %: 15)	Michael Cooper
Usual Meeting Schedule	Teleconferences: Bi-Weekly Face-to-face: 1 per year

Scope

This group will develop a standard model to represent user intent in interaction regardless of device-specific interaction. It will also allow the use of alternate input devices such as assistive technologies, while providing a simple model for authors to develop interaction for a wide array of devices. These capabilities are critical for accessibility, and they also benefit mainstream users. These events enhance or complement APIs from other Working Groups, and this group will coordinate closely with those groups, may support enhanced deliverables of such groups instead of developing the model itself, and will form a joint task force with the Web Events WG.

Tasks within this scope include:

Gather use case and requirements;
Create Recommendation-track specifications;
Create test suites;
Monitor implementation of and conformance to Recommendations and produce interoperability reports;
Maintain specifications, manage errata, publish revisions;
Coordinate with other Working Groups producing Recommendation-track APIs;
Coordinate with industry organizations as needed to harmonize event APIs;
Conduct workshops and interoperability meetings as needed.

Success Criteria

Create event APIs that become W3C Recommendations and have interoperable implementations.

Out of Scope

Explicitly out of scope are any device-specific events, models, APIs, etc., such as (but not limited to) touch, gestures, and voice.

Deliverables

This group will produce the following Recommendation-track specifications:

Indie UI: Events 1.0, an abstraction between device-specific user interaction events and inferred user intent such as scroll, activate, etc. This will be a joint deliverable with the Web Events WG.
Indie UI: User Context 1.0, a set of contextual properties and methods, and a vehicle to access them to facilitate a Web application's ability to adapt to the user's needs within a particular context. This will be a joint deliverable with the Web Events WG.

Active deliverables are detailed on the Indie UI WG home page. The 1.0 version of Indie UI will focus on support for actions common at the present time with touch-, keyboard-, and mouse-based devices. It may provide an extension model for forwards compatibility, and future versions are expected to address additional user actions that become prevalent.

In addition to Recommendation-track documents, the group will publish supporting materials as Working Group Notes. These primarily consist of primers and best practices, and may also include requirements and analyses.

Other Deliverables

For each Recommendation, the group will produce test suites.
As needed, the group will produce tools to perform tests and record results.
Some event APIs may be designed to interact with platform accessibility APIs, in which case the group may produce tools to test the platform accessibility APIs directly.
The group will publish test results to demonstrate successful exit from Candidate Recommendation.
The group may publish more extensive test results as interoperability reports.

Milestones

Note: The actual production of some of the deliverables may follow a different timeline. The group will document any schedule changes on the group home page.

Milestones
Specification	FPWD	LC	CR	PR	Rec
Note: The group will document significant changes from this initial schedule on the group home page.
Indie UI: Events	April 2012	April 2013	October 2013	April 2014	June 2014
Indie UI: User Context	April 2012	August 2013	February 2014	August 2014	October 2014

Dependencies and Liaisons

W3C Groups

Dependencies

The Indie UI Working Group coordinates in particular with the following Working Groups:

Web Events WG: Ensure event APIs are complementary to or enhancements of APIs developed by this group. Form joint task force to work on Indie UI: Events and Indie UI: User Context.

Liaisons

In addition to the above groups, the Indie UI Working Group also coordinates with the following Working Groups as needed:

HTML WG: Work with this group to develop event APIs for HTML as needed. Deliverables may become part of the HTML WG deliverables or the Indie UI WG deliverables.
Hypertext Coordination Group: Coordinate with other members of the Hypertext Coordination Group on activities.
Internationalization Core WG: Address internationalization in event APIs.
MultiModal Interaction WG: Ensure event APIs are suited to or available on the full range of hardware and modalities. Coordinate features of Indie UI with Multimodal Architecture and Interfaces.
Protocols and Formats WG: Coordinate on priorities for event APIs, and develop event API for WAI-ARIA.
Research and Development WG: Coordinate on research needed to determine optimal event API solutions, and implement research findings as appropriate.
SVG WG: Work with this group to develop event APIs for SVG as needed. Deliverables may become part of the SVG WG deliverables or the Indie UI WG deliverables.
User Agent Accessibility Guidelines WG: Ensure event APIs meet User Agent Accessibility Guidelines.
WAI Coordination Group: Coordinate with other members of the WAI Coordination Group on activities.
Web Applications WG: Ensure event APIs are complementary to or enhancements of APIs developed by this group. Avoid overlaps of scope and allocate deliverables as appropriate. In particular, coordinate with this group on replacements for DOM mutation events and onactivate event.

Furthermore, Indie UI Working Group expects to follow these W3C Recommendations:

External Groups

Accessibility Interoperability Alliance: Coordinate features of Web event APIs with the several accessibility APIs being harmonized by the Interoperability of Accessibility APIs Working Group.
ISO JTC 1/SC 35: Develop event APIs that implement or complement the standards produced by this committee.
Linux Foundation Open Accessibility Workgroup: Coordinate features of Web event APIs with the IAccessible2 platform accessibility API.

Participation

To be successful, the Indie UI Working Group is expected to have 7 or more active participants for its duration. Effective participation to Indie UI Working Group is expected to consume six hours per week for each participant; eight hours per week for editors. The Indie UI Working Group will allocate also the necessary resources for building Test Suites for each specification.

Participants are reminded of the Good Standing requirements of the W3C Process.

Communication

This group primarily conducts its work on the public mailing list public-indie-ui@w3.org (public-indie-ui@w3.org archive). Administrative and planning discussion may take place on the Member only mailing list member-indie-ui-editors@w3.org (member-indie-ui-editors@w3.org archive, Member-only link). Comments on deliverables may be sent to public-indie-ui-comments@w3.org (public-indie-ui-comments@w3.org archive).

Information about the group (deliverables, participants, face-to-face meetings, teleconferences, etc.) is available from the Indie UI Working Group home page.

Decision Policy

As explained in the Process Document (section 3.3), this group will seek to make decisions when there is consensus. When the Chair puts a question and observes dissent, after due consideration of different opinions, the Chair should record a decision (possibly after a formal vote) and any objections, and move on.

When deciding a substantive technical issue, the Chair may put a question before the group. When the Chair conducts a formal vote to reach a decision on a substantive technical issue, eligible voters may vote on a proposal one of three ways: for a proposal, against a proposal, or abstain. For the proposal to pass there must be more votes for the proposal than against. In case of a tie, the Chair will decide the outcome of the proposal.

This charter is written in accordance with Section 3.4, Votes of the W3C Process Document and includes no voting procedures beyond what the Process Document requires.

Patent Policy

This Working Group operates under the W3C Patent Policy (5 February 2004 Version). To promote the widest adoption of Web standards, W3C seeks to issue Recommendations that can be implemented, according to this policy, on a Royalty-Free basis.

For more information about disclosure obligations for this group, please see the W3C Patent Policy Implementation.

About this Charter

This charter for the Indie UI Working Group has been created according to section 6.2 of the Process Document. In the event of a conflict between this document or the provisions of any charter and the W3C Process, the W3C Process shall take precedence.

Michael Cooper, Indie UI WG Team Contact

$Date: 2012/05/22 20:55:17 $