Silver Task Force Teleconference -- 12 Dec 2016

<MichaelC> meeting: Silver FtF Day 1

<jeanne> Trackbot, start meeting

<trackbot> Meeting: Silver Task Force Teleconference

<trackbot> Date: 12 December 2016

<MichaelC> meeting: Silver FtF Day 1

agenda discussion

<jeanne> Edits to the agenda are on the wiki <- https://www.w3.org/WAI/GL/task-forces/silver/wiki/Meetings/FtF_Dec_2016#Agenda

<jeanne> Sarah: I would like to have 2 hours to do a RACI diagram: What Roles, Who is Accountable, Who do we need to Consult, who do we need to keep Informed.

<jeanne> scribe: jeanne

Sarah: Overview, identify roles, then map people to roles.
... start with an Activity
... make provisional personas for that role. Who the person is, why they need accessibility guidelines
... later on we will prioritize and group them
... created a stakeholder results form, with separate columns for the roles.

SL: [reads list of stakeholders from the Design document. ]

<Lauriat> https://www.w3.org/WAI/GL/task-forces/silver/wiki/Design_Plan_for_Silver#Stakeholder_Map

Michael: One of the things that the WCAG WG brings is the institutional memory. We need to be aware of the compromises made in the past.

Jeanne: [reads the list of roles from the submission form]

Roles of stakeholders

Person with Disability

scribe: Sites are accessible
... find sites that are accessibile
... the standard exist

DIsability organization

scribe: inform the standards
... provides structure
... institutionailzed advocacy

Thought leader in accessibility

scribe: Where is the industry going?
... overlap with disability organization
... having the standard allows thought leader to build on the standard

Influencer in disability

scribe: floor for disabilities to build
... identify new technology with new disability needs
... identify new disabilities not covered by standards

Accessibility Professional

scribe: the standard by which you know you are doing what is needed
... may also be someone who works with people with disabilities

Accessibility Developer/Designer

scribe: point of reference for building software

Accessibility specialist

scribe: someone who works with people with disabilitities - day to day helpers or training helpers
... point of reference for how things should work
... report problems to vendors of software and assistive technology
... guidelines and sjupporting materials help them identify how to help their clients
... learning materials

Researchers

scribe: guidelines can be a topic of study
... use it as a measure in their research
... gap analysis of the guidelines as a topic of research
... could help prioritize research

Instructors/Professors

scribe: teaching coding - same as accessibility professionals
... working with people with disabilities, working from the other side
... point of reference
... curriculum basis

Accessibility advisor or consultant-type role

scribe: accessibility audit, gaps in process and development, knows accessibility needs and solutions.
... knows the guidelines, communicating about how the guideline applies to a specific situations
... gives perceived legitimacy and a framework for the communication

QA Professional

scribe: manual testing, writing test plans
... automation side writes the tooling and validate the tooling
... goal is that the product conforms to the guidelines and validating the product conforms

Designers

scribe: to design products that conform to guidelines
... understand constraints of guidelines
... must have creativity within the constraints of the guidelines
... guidelines provide a boundary
... the boundary cannot be a so small that it becomes a constraints.
... must have language in the guidelines that they can understand

Developers

scribe: using the guidelines to know how to write the software
... a specification book (for Designers, more than developers)
... must solve the problems even the designers overlooked.
... developer executes the design
... validating designs they get
... validating that what they have made is correct
... source of solutions of problems -- what is an accessible data picker?

AWK: I'm worried about haviing so many different stakeholer groups. I think that we are making it less defined. I worry that we will not be able to map person-to-role mapping. I see 3 different levels: person with disability, content developers, intermediaries

Product Manager - the person who owns the product and has to make it successful

scribe: more indirect: prioritization of whatever has to be done in their product
... use the guidelines to understand the issues that their product has to meet
... and understand the impact of their product lacks
... helps set and communicate expectations

Product Manager

Project Manager

scribe: help designers understand scope
... help developers prioritize
... scoping, timeframes of what peeople want to do.

Content providers, producers and editors

scribe: similar to designers
... need to know boundaries within they can work
... depends on the type of content creators
... informs a style guide
... creative solutions to accessibility needs
... awareness

I need guidelines for...

Researcher: For a thesis statement

Influencer: to be creditble

QA: Know what bugs to write

Developer: Avoid creating bugs

Instructor: have topics for my class

Disability organization: Advocate toward a stable standard reference

Person with a disability: Use technology

Accessibility helper: understand how to do my job

Accessibility/designer developer: tell people what to do

Accessibility advisor consultant: tell people what to do.

Designer: know what to do

Product manager: Priorize adding new features

Content: make accessible content

Accessibility Influencers: be credible

Disability Influencers: identify gaps

Project manager: allocate time /wrangling

Roles for Stakeholder Map, Part 2

Policymaker (govt)

scribe: define the policies that others need to work against
... they need guidelines to set policy
... they need international guidelines for harmonization with other countries

Policymaker (organization and corporations)

scribe: internal policies match exteral (when applicable) or to meet customer needs and goals
... sometimes to demonstrate compliance
... risk limiting factor -- meeting the guidelines mitigate risk, even if all customer needs aren't met.

Web browser and platform developer (extensions, ECHO platform, hardware input output, native apps)

scribe: need standards to insure their platforms enable software to meet the standards
... platform itself needs to meet guidelines

Assistive Technology developer

scribe: follow their side of the guidelines so the AT works with conforming platforms and software
... capitalize on the guidelines -- build increased functionality that is based on the guidelines
... meet the needs of the audience with the specific disability they are addressing

Authoring Tool Developers

scribe: software needs to meet the guidelines so people with disabilities can use it
... create application, content and interactivity that is accessible
... the border between content creation and programming is blurring. It will be a challenge to Silver
... help you author accessible content and reduce the way to make inaccessible content

Evaluation Tool Developers

scribe: something to evaluate, test cases
... automatic and semi automatic tests, they need guidelines that are implementable to them.

Lawyers

scribe: communicate definitively
... define the terms of case settlements
... demonstrate non-compliance

Accessibility Advocates

scribe: educating people on need for accessibility
... persuading and validating a position

Innovators (not necessarily accessibility related)

scribe: when innovations are deployed, the guidelines address the requirements of those technologies

Industry Association

scribe: and Professional Associations
... certificationfor memebers - training and testing

Creating Training Materials

scribe: topics and explanation of concepts

CTO - IT Managers

scribe: prioritization
... compliance with standards
... establish accountability for compliance

Call Center

scribe: indirect. Need to know how it is implemented on the products they are responsible for.
... similar to the accessibility specialist

Standards Organizations

scribe: coordination with their own standards

WCAG WG

scribe: so the web will be more accessible
... to address all the needs of everyone else. The guidelines are the way the working uses to meet all those needs.
... standards that are reasonable with their jurisdictions
... harmonized with other juristictions
... useful and up to date (despite unpredictable timelines)

<MichaelC> scribe: MichaelC

Follow-up from morning exercise

sh: let's make sense of the roles

what do they need

what are they looking for

what do we want from them

what are their commonalities

we want to prioritize them

sl: group

sh: I did abstractions for us to work with

sl: group first

will help with the following conceptualization

based on the needs for the staeholders

sh: so we have all the buckets

for group

e.g. if we´re interested in design decision types

we might look at AT devs, PMs, designers

sl: some groups might be technical, others not

allows us to tailor surveys

sh: I use accessibility guidelines to make policy

* gov

* org policy

* disability orgs

sh: I use accessibility guidelines to use policy

* lawyers

* disability orgs

* a11y consultant

sh: is there difference between make and use policy?

sl: yes, though interactions similar

sh: make design decisions

js: (for content)

* eval tool

* authoring tool

js: make content

* project manager

* product manager

* developers

* designers

* QA

* content producers

* accessibility development / design

* IT managers

js: Standards orgs

* standards developers

* WCAG WG

sl: policy sometimes grouped into sub-categories sometimes not

sh: is grouping not helpful?

sl: it is but not 1:1

sh: does it help us?

e.g., researchers might go in multiple buckets

sl: goal to come up with stakeholder gap with gaps identified and plan to fill the gaps

sh: @@

sl: @@

sh: this grouping helps understand the roles

mc: grouping make fewer types of roles we need to treat separately

sh: I want the provisional personas

put attributes on the roles so we can see the overlaps better

sl: what do we accomplish by grouping?

surveys and stakeholder interviews we´ll handle later

sh: what roles critical to meet the goal of supporting PWD?

sl: depends on which specific exercise we´re doing

right now priority to identify gaps

js: let´s look at how many people we have in the categories

sl: easier for the ones we had in the survey

note accessibility professionals is a big bucket

greater flexibility is a big priority

let´s look at roles that seem sparsely populated

WGAG WG participants, standards orgs

though WG easier to reach out to

we have lots of people from a11y orgs

though there may gaps in types we´ll want to fill in

24 marked as policy makers

sh: ask people to self-categorize?

mc: we don´t want to make too much noise with these people

sl: we probably need more in the lawyers category

12 web browser developer

73 web content developers

9 AT developers

think we need emphasis on diversity within this category as well

e.g., no screen reader developer

mc: that´s been a difficult group for us to reach

<scribe> ACTION: jeanne to cast about for screen reader developer names [recorded in http://www.w3.org/2016/12/12-silver-minutes.html#action01]

<trackbot> Created ACTION-9 - Cast about for screen reader developer names [on Jeanne F Spellman - due 2016-12-19].

sl: from some of the sparse categories, we could ask the people already in them for recommendations of others

<scribe> ACTION: jeanne to ask Lainey for other lawyer names [recorded in http://www.w3.org/2016/12/12-silver-minutes.html#action02]

<trackbot> Created ACTION-10 - Ask lainey for other lawyer names [on Jeanne F Spellman - due 2016-12-19].

sl: many of these are ¨know accessbility¨ types

need to also explicitly try to reach ¨don´t know accessibility¨ types

js: AWK suggested alistapart outreach

<scribe> ACTION: andrew to do outreach to alistapart for non-a11y people [recorded in http://www.w3.org/2016/12/12-silver-minutes.html#action03]

<trackbot> Created ACTION-11 - Do outreach to alistapart for non-a11y people [on Andrew Kirkpatrick - due 2016-12-19].

mc: let´s be very deliberate on that type of public outreach

sl: content orgs, want to get lots of very different types of content

js: @@

sl: games, lots of authoring tool overlap

google docs

audio interfaces

<scribe> ACTION: jeanne to contact ian hamilton for game developer frameworks [recorded in http://www.w3.org/2016/12/12-silver-minutes.html#action04]

<trackbot> Created ACTION-12 - Contact ian hamilton for game developer frameworks [on Jeanne F Spellman - due 2016-12-19].

sl: need to brainstorm a list of content types we want to capture

likewise on platforms, want diverse set of platforms

don´t think we have mobile, VR right now

mc: want to get vehicles, web of things

js: Mike Elledge for former, Dave Raggett for latter

Alan Bird may have connections as well

mc: +1 to broad brainstorm here

sl: also diversity in general within the groups

international, types of org, etc.

sh: what is platform?

better word

js: hardware, os, extension

sl: everything between content and person except AT

js: and maybe even that

sl: sometimes

mc: is this a sufficient grouping axis?

sl: good for now

just want to make sure we haven´t missed a group

e.g., content creators we didn´t reach out for

js: at least outside a11y community

sl: which filtered our resuts

sh: <summarizes the groups>

sl: we need to expand people with disabilities

<SarahHorton> Thank you :)

mc: for disability categorization

<SarahHorton> Here's a start on the roles and activites inventory: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1XK_evYulIaLsYOlMjuDOC763xWL2TOM9SvPjRX_d9ag/edit?usp=sharing

blind and visually impaired

deaf and hearing impaired

mobility impaired

cognitive impaired

learning disabilities

and multiple disabilities which is often overlooked

sl: deaf-blind

<jeanne> JS: disabled veterans organizations

sh: let´s fill in roles and activities

sl: some roles we won´t need to go into as much depth as others

sh: today

sl: forseeable future

sh: what will future look like if future succeeds?

js: significant step towards unicorns and rainbows

easier for people to get information on making their products and services accessible

sl: everybody can do what they´re trying to do more easily

mc: people can get the info they need sooner to address a11y

js: broaden what standards apply to

mc: we´d all love a11y to come automatically without thought

but Silver won´t make that happen

we hope it takes us a step closer

but don´t bite off an over-large scope

sl: we want to make it easier for people to adapt to technology change

and keep a11y

right now we´re being aspirational

but later we will need to narrow things down

mc: WCAG 2 tried to be be-all and end-all

for stability of policy

led to heistance to change, even create supplementary guidance

for silver we want to be able to react to technology change more quickly

while remaining viewed as a useful and solid base for policy harmonization

sl: @@
... think for stakeholder map we´ve gotten what we need out of today´s discussion

have a starting point for goals, discussions

for recruiting do we want to prioritize some of these roles for TF participation?

mc: yes

sh: how about that stack ranking thing?

sl: not out of context of specific activities

in specific tasks it will make sense to focus more on different groups

we might do prioritization and group of surveys

sh: are there roles that our work would fail if we don´t have people from that role?

sl: some roles as needing to be involved in the full process rather than as needed?

sh: yes

mc: pwd critical

policy people important for our history

js: tool developers

sl: can sort by responsibility, accountability, consult, inform

<Lauriat> Scribe: Lauriat

Recruiting: how many people, what outreach

Jeanne: Particularly looking at how many people, what specialties, that sort of thing.

Michael: We should talk about the size of the TF.
... a lot of people feel the time expectation is high, which it is, so I want to reconfirm with you the size of the TF and other ways people can participate.
... How restrictive to want to be?
... Then talk about how do we want to go about with active recruiting.

Jeanne: We want a larger circle. Research partners, people who contribute heavily, but aren't necessarily part of the TF.

Sarah: Does it make sense to talk about the structure of the activity? It seems a bit up in the air.

Michael: Part of why I wanted to talk about that after tomorrow's WG Call, as the charter will influence things.
... Maybe talk about how the group would account for things if the decision goes in either direction?

Jeanne: I prefer to stay with WCAG, but the advantage of the CG is other people (researchers, etc.) would have different rules around IP, but we could also have a TF and a CG for researchers.
... We have a plan for how to move forward and get started, but the danger is CGs tend to have a high rate of failure without support TF have.

Sarah: I don't really know a lot about the internal workings of the W3C. To pick up another point we had started before the break, I think we have some goals in the guidelines being more effective in producing accessible outcomes.
... We do have goals that mean that we will do this effectively. It helps a lot to have an autonomous group that's working on the project, because you're less likely to get sidetracked or bogged down by legacy stuff, and can focus on the attributes of the project you need to.

Michael: I agree with that, but I'll argue for having a degree of contact with the WG helps, with validity of the work itself.
... A strong ongoing connection. We need a group that can move fast and do the work, but also have the WG bringing that memory and experience to inform the work.

Sarah: Not advocating for one thing or another, since I don't know how these things work.

Jeanne: For the next nine months, we won't have a lot of standards work going on, and we'll really need people who know research.
... While we do the research, it'll attract more interest from people who know the standards work.

Michael: To a certain extent, we can't control who joins the TF, but we can set expectations and manage things in a way that accounts for that. I want someone in the core group who can provide a bit of a slowdown in terms of perspective and catching things early so that we don't end up with something unusable for one case for whatever reason.

Sarah: Someone has said he'd help with research, and managing it.

Michael: We probably would want to work with the Research TF in order to form requests correctly to the outside world for research, and then they could do that on their own. They'd have their own timelines and quality requirements that may not match our own, though.
... That can be coordinated by the Research TF or by the CG.

Sarah: If someone volunteered to help us with the diary studies, the self-reporting projects. Helping design the studies and evaluate the findings from it. That might end up being a document articulating the things we need to know.

Michael: W3C probably couldn't publish the document, for reasons of copyright, but they could publish it and then we could reference, but CG could publish it and then it'd have W3C copyright.

Sarah: To review, we sent out a request for research partners.
... People from that will expect a response from us after this week for how we can move forward with that.

Michael: The group will need to publish the list of research requests, and the group will need to publish a timeline of these things.

Jeanne: We've published the timeline, which does need refining.

Michael: We have a core set of people, hopefully under W3C process. Talking about needing to interface with certain external groups, including managing the results and these interfaces.
... When things happen outside of W3C process, we'll need to come up with ways to work with them that don't introduce complications, like IP-related publishing issues.

Sarah: If this person joined the TF, we'd need to get Andrew and Josh invite this person to join the WG?

Michael: Yes.

Sarah: If I, as an outside person, want to contribute for two years but not join the WG, how would that work?

Michael: They'd need to communicate things via the public open channels.

Sarah: Back to the question of recruiting, we want to focus on people committed to the WG over time and not someone looking to sign up for this one project.
... In the CG path, it's a more fluid engagement, and can come and go depending on the work at hand. Do we need to figure out recruiting for each scenario (TF vs. CG)?

Michael: Yes.

Jeanne: Once we product a requirements document, we need to figure out what to do with that. If in the WG, it wouldn't be a major battle to get the work chartered to move forward.
... If a CG, we'll need to find a place to put the work. That may mean rechartering the WG, or creating a new one, which would create conflicts.

Michael: A major risk: Silver is developed to be great by the people working on it, and the WG doesn't take it seriously.
... it could work as a CG, but it's a risk.
... A CG is technically independent. I would technically be prohibited from working with the CG.

Jeanne: Web Platform has a CG, as one exception to that.

Michael: Let's move forward with the assumption that the TF will happen. What do we want for that?
... Issues with the 8-hour per week time commitment, other ways to direct people to other channels?

Sarah: One way to look at this is to look at the work of the TF, talk about the roles needed on the TF to execute it.
... It may be the case that people come and go from the TF, depending on the work.
... Maybe someone just comes in for the duration of the activity and then backs up again once we move to another phase.

Jeanne: I was looking at it from the point of what does it take to work with the W3C. A group less than six isn't really viable.
... I think we should try for eight. Manageable, nimble, and small, but could have the flexibility of something small.
... What kind of persona do we need for the group? We have too many people from TPG on the group, and that will cause problems. We have someone from another place reaching out to join, which is great.
... We have some people (including some research-focused) interested, but very put off by the 8-hour requirement.

Michael: Thinking in terms of diversity of the TF.
... Including having at least two disability groups represented.
... We may want to think in terms of concentric circles, where the core puts in 8 hours, and then the next circle out puts in a bit less.

Sarah: In the past when you've had a successful project, can you describe the personas of the core people involved?

Michael: I think we need people who are organized, keep up on action items, plot their work effort into the future, technically skilled, able to express their opinion and accept other people's opinions.

Sarah: These are attributes of a person, which is good. Any other experience, role-based types, maybe people involved in policy for example?

Michael: Well, people with disabilities are a must.

Sarah: PhD?

Jeanne: Certainly not on the TF.

Sarah: Jeanne, you mentioned where people work. (Oh! International.) How important are you seeing that?

Michael: A little more fluid. If half the TF comes from one company, that'll raise questions.

Sarah: I like the idea of concentric circles, bringing certain people into the core for periods of time.
... Should we reach out to specific individuals?

Michael: Thinking of specifically two levels of collaboration, the core group and an outer group.
... We'll update the work statement to say that the core group will put in an expected 8 hours per week and then have other contributors, but we don't need to explicitly say that they aren't in a core circle.

Sarah: We got a lot of people in the stakeholder responses who want to take part in Silver.

Michael: Do we want to just set up a CG now in order to get more participation and interest?

Sarah: I like that idea, because we really need to get people involved and bring them along. It allows us to do some of these activities that seem confining within the context of the WG (like the research) that we could do in the CG.
... Having a group around that activity gives it a bit more formality and credibility.

Michael: We can set up a mailing list, a wiki, things like that.

Andrew: Thinking about the community group aspect, I feel like it's going to be hard to characterize our current state without people pointing out that that's what incubation is.
... We know that there's tight connection that we'll need to have between Silver and the WG.

Michael: Maybe plan A will be that we don't talk about the supplementary CG idea yet, and just go ahead with the proposal for the TF.

Jeanne: We won't be successful unless we continue with the WG.

Sarah: Yeah.

Michael: We can be thinking it might happen, but don't have to propose it just yet.

<scribe> ACTION: Michael Update work statement to reflect updated work expectations. [recorded in http://www.w3.org/2016/12/12-silver-minutes.html#action05]

<trackbot> Created ACTION-13 - Update work statement to reflect updated work expectations. [on Michael Cooper - due 2016-12-19].

Sarah: If you want names of people, let me know. Not-your-usual suspects kind of people.

Michael: With this, knowledge of W3C is kind of important.

Liaisons to other organizations

Michael: I want to cover strategy for liaising with these organizations, and what organizations we want to liaise with.
... We want to avoid misunderstandings about expectations and such.

Sarah: Liaising with other standards organizations to let them know about what we're doing?

Michael: At least that.
... We want to really not be prohibited from doing this work, but still remain sensitive to their needs.

trackbot, make meeting

<trackbot> Sorry, Lauriat, I don't understand 'trackbot, make meeting'. Please refer to <http://www.w3.org/2005/06/tracker/irc> for help.

trackbot, end meeting

Silver Task Force Teleconference

12 Dec 2016

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