Indie UI Working Group Charter

Scope

This group will develop a set of events to represent user intent in interaction with Web applications, regardless of device-specific interaction. These events 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.

The types of actions that can be represented in this model are those prevalent among GUI and Web applications at this time, 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. These are basic user interface gestures that are common to most platforms but are actuated in various ways depending on hardware features, system design, and user interaction modality, yet via Indie UI can be exposed in a simple and universal manner to Web applications.

These events enhance or complement APIs from other Working Groups, and provide an intermediate layer between device- and modality-specific events (which are out of scope) and the functionality needed by Web applications. This group will coordinate closely with groups that develop events for particular devices and modalities to ensure Indie UI provides a good translation layer to express user intent. The group 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.

The Deliverables section describes the documents that, together, specify Indie UI. No other Recommendation-track deliverables are in scope.

Tasks within this scope include:

• Gather use case and requirements for Indie UI, within the above scope;
• Create Recommendation-track specifications for Indie UI: Events 1.0 and Indie UI: User Context 1.0;
• Create test suites for the above deliverables;
• Monitor implementation of and conformance to the above Recommendations and produce interoperability reports;
• Maintain the above specifications, manage errata, publish revisions;
• Coordinate with other Working Groups producing related Recommendation-track APIs;
• Coordinate with industry organizations as needed to harmonize event APIs;
• Conduct workshops and interoperability meetings as needed.

Success Criteria

• The two deliverables of this Working Group are completed;
• The technology is demonstrated interoperable via at least two implementations in user agents of each normative feature;
• The independence of Indie UI is demonstrated with at least partial implementation experience across more two or more modalities;
• The technology version 1.0 achieves W3C Recommendation status.

Additionally it is hoped that two or more complete implementations are available in mainstream user agents and that "real" (not testing) Web sites use the technology.

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.

Only 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. are in scope of Indie UI; higher-order inferred intents that do not relate directly to concrete user interface interaction steps are out of scope. Other specifications, such as Web Intents, may address this level.