Silver Community Group Teleconference -- 18 May 2018

AccessU & GAAD Recap

<shari> Jan present +

Shawn: AccessU and GAAD Recap! Who was present? Jan and Shari?

Jan: Shari, do you want to talk and I'll fill in?

Sharia: We only had 2 women that joined us for the mid-morning/lunch session. We went over everything we did at the design sprint; talked about conformance. Generated ideas. Got suggestions on how to measure and test using various rubrics or weighted scoring system.
... Talked about giving more credit to companies that...if we had bronze, silver, gold, platinum levels...people currently in AA would be grandfathered in at say "Bronze"
... talked about different ways to incentive companies to meet the new requirements and incorporate them. Maybe assign points if they do X requirement and a user study with people with some disabilities might be worth more points.

<Charles> using that metallurgical metaphor, perhaps Silver is the highest rank

Sharia: later in the afternoon some more folks joined and brought up problems with that approach. Definitely some concerns with trying to level things.
... Mary Jo from IBM showed up. Talked about their a11y statement and their work. They self identify and don't go through a 3rd party. Maybe give more points for people using 3rd party evaluators, but Mary Jo concerned that IBM would be punished in that scenario since they do it themself.
... maybe consider the type of business, the size of the business
... Jan, were there others beyond size and type?

Jan: Don't remember more than that.

Jeanne: We had people come and got good feedback. When we were talking about getting 3rd party evaluation it was a fairly new idea.
... One of the things that came out in the afternoon that I really like is a solution to the point system. How do you work around someone that does a lot of work in one area, but not in another area. But the point system gives them credit unnecessarily.
... Maybe have areas where you have to get points in each area, so it would balance out the points system and give us protection from those gaming it.

Jan: I think it was that last lady that came in and had resources to help with it. We have notes and stuff, we should get that sent sent to the group.

Jeanne: We made a list of things we might want to incentivize. It's a pretty comprehensive list. One of things is taking actions to improve the culture.
... I thought it was pretty cool.

Shawn: Trying to wrap my head around what the would look like.

Jeanne: Ongoing training, executive level measurement for accessibility. All of your executives job measurement would be how accessible is their portion of the product that are actual measures.

Shawn: Seems like wouldn't be as great for comformance. It's not really relevant, while it effects how accessible it's likely to be, it's not representative of how accessible it is.

Jeanne: The beauty of the different measurements come in, you could have different points for different types of products.
... different criteria depending on the size of the company. Wouldn't be penalized if you're small and not doing some things expected of big companies.
... It gives you an idea of how well it will be maintained in the future.

Shawn: Cool. I'm looking forward to reading the write-up of everything.
... Anything else of note around AccessU or GAAD?

Jeanne: I did an AccessU webinar. It went okay.
... How did yours go, Charles?

Charles: It was an exhausting day? For the last 3 years have been doing lunch and learn at my company and then at a meet up in the evening. I shared a shirt URL in my presentation in the afternoon, but don't know that anyone cared to go follow it.

Zacom, next item

Requirements draft

<Lauriat> https://docs.google.com/document/d/15F4KuNXYK5q2rOgb4ktHiJQMQpAEL9EetARpMU3vD_A/edit

Shawn: I worked on this over the last several days in spare time between meetings.
... it's the same document we had before.
... but I worked in a separate document, which is why it didn't change. I took the long form stuff and moved it into the notes. And turned the requirements documents more into a draft of what we'd send to the working group as "Hey, these are the requirements we want to do"
... I started with an abstract declaring what it is and what it's for since other requirement documents had it as well.
... From there, went into a basic introduction with wording that declared overall intentions. What's the point of the accessibility guidelines.

<Lauriat> "People with disabilities encounter barriers to accessing and making use of content and functionality made available online. We need guidelines for how to identify these barriers for addressing so that people with disabilities can use the content and functionality."

<Lauriat> "People need guidelines for how to create and assess content and functionality that they make available online."

Shawn: Was trying to declare goals of Silver as a11y guidelines but have it not be just about web pages.
... "content and functionality" is how I phrased it
... still a bit aspirational for how we're trying to achieve those goals, and a rough version of what we did on Tuesday.
... removed a lot of the "mores" we can wordsmith it before actually submitting, but it's pretty much the same as what we had before

Charles: Like the removal of "more"s
... can we go back a step to the intro of how you tried to remove "web?" i'm concerned with phrase "online" as a proxy for that. That means it could possibly exclude offline experiences, like Progressive Web Apps.

Shawn: Wanted to be wary of...not just covering all of technology.

Charles: Can't say "digital"

Shawn: right, in one way it's too broad and one way it's too constraining.

Charles: Maybe "using web technologies" and not consumed in a browser and would include native apps that call web services.

Luis: I think we should avoid "web" because it will still be interpreted as "web pages"

Shawn: Because we don't know the full scope of silver, it's difficult to describe what's included in Silver.

Shari: What if you just put "digital" in front of content.

Shawn: That gets into native very quickly. Like CDs are digital content that might never touch the internet. We might want to cover that but we haven't reached that decision.

Jeanne: We don't want to say "content" because we're also including tools and user agents.

Shawn: It's making use of content and functionality, but it includes tools used to make it and user agents displaying it.
... added some notes about that so we can address the need to add it.
... We have the design principles and following that, I have the requirements. And that's a pretty short section. Keeping it at Michaels' suggestion of a high level "this is what we want to do"

<Lauriat> "Previous accessibility guidelines described how to make a set of web pages loaded with a traditional web browser accessible to people with disabilities. These guidelines provided this via strictly pass/fail tests with the goal of consistently reproducible conformance results."

Shawn: starts with similarly awkardly worded paragraph

(see paragraph above)

<Lauriat> WCAG 2.0's requirements: https://www.w3.org/TR/2006/NOTE-wcag2-req-20060425/

Charles: I like the idea of comparing it to the scope of the previous guidelines instead of the outcomes of previous guidelines.

Shawn: Trying to say "other guidelines have described things around a11y and we want to build on that with new requirements"
... not say "Web Content Accessibility Guidelines" so we can include ATAG, UAG, etc.
... even though it says specifically using a web browser, it still includes more

Charles: I think it works as is

Shawn: Now the actual requirements. Have two categories. The actual list is 6 points.
... Supporting needs of PWD, Make guidelines accessible.
... these six points have spoken to 11 problem statements. More like 10 of them. Persuading other is an overall industry thing and not solved by accessibility guidelines.
... Do we want to talk about categories first?

Charles: I think the categories are fine.
... perhaps it's covered elsewhere...we should probably clearly articulate that there are governance requirements. We're also trying to solve regularity with which this guideline gets updated. Don't know if it fits neatly into those categories.

Share: I think the categories are a little confusing. Why are 4, 5, and 6 not meeting the needs of PWD
... If we want to keep the categories, I'd suggest we go "silver builds on the previous guidelines to...1) blah blah...by writing the guidelines using plain language...etc"
... doing that might make it a little more complicated than it needs to be. I like how it's simple and explicit in the beginning. Really nice job.

Shawn: One of the things I was trying to do was make the requirements themselves easy to read. Other ones I looked at were 50 pages of clutter and little clarity

Charles: Simpler structure makes it more concise. Removing two heading for the requirements list makes it simpler.

Shawn: After the requirements, I have background which is the problem statements.
... I linked to problem statement page in the wiki...

<Lauriat> The Problem Statements describe areas that came up in research for Silver that we need to focus on and address in the new guidelines, to provide some background for how we developed these requirements.

Shawn: then the three problem statement areas in columns so it's not a lengthy list

Shari: I like it

Shawn: At the top you were saying it should start with the requirements. We didn't quite do that, but we have "these are the goals, here are the requirements to meet goals..."

Charles: Following format of the 2.0 requirements document, statements like "identifying past work" are described with dates that occured

Shawn: Will add a note to add dates.

Charles: Don't know if that's required or the best ideas. Just noting it would be more consistent with previous requirement doc.

Shawn: And I should probably link to our research page.
... with that, let's talk through requirements themselves. Even though only six, I think it covers several different points within the problem statements we had.
... The first is the longest one.

<Lauriat> 1. Include guidelines that better supports people’s needs which do not have strict pass/fail tests, by developing alternative methods of measuring whether guidance has been implemented correctly.

Charles: Only word that I would question is "correctly" maybe replace with sufficiently. More to meet need of people than the need of the guideline.
... don't mind the length.

Shawn: There were two things I wanted this to cover and both very related.
... one is including "not strict pass/fail"
... and more "needs of people with disabilities"

<Lauriat> Current edit: Silver will build on these previous guidelines to: …not have strict pass/fail tests, by developing alternative methods of measuring whether guidance has been implemented sufficiently that better supports people’s needs.

Shawn: One of the other requirements is to write them using plain language. I think as a matter of translating from Shawn to plain language that will help.

Next requirement.

<Lauriat> 2. Develop a conformance model with the flexibility to include guidelines with ranges of helpfulness of implementations.

Shawn: Needs measurability that is usable for people.
... If someone writes a clear label, might be clear for some, but not other people.
... The "helpfulness of implementations" needs better wording

<kirkwood> Include guidelines which do not have strict pass/fail tests. Develop alternative methods of measuring implementation.

Jeanne: I think we have to say "not exclusively pass/fail" We'll still have some, but it won't be the only methods.

Shawn: I've updated it.

<Lauriat> 3. Create a structure for guidelines that can better meet the needs of people with disabilities in future technologies and interactions.

Shawn: time check is 9 minutes...moving to next requirement

<Lauriat> Write the guidelines using Plain Language.

<kirkwood> I like #4

<Lauriat> 5. Make the guidelines available in different accessible and usable ways.

Shawn: A lot of different people need to use the guidelines. They all have different backgrounds, so one size fits all doesn't work for that.
... a problem WCAG has is they see the supplementary materials and assume all of it is the guidelines.
... assume there is way too much that makes up the guidelines. We need other information that explains it differently that is a different way of reading the guidelines.

<kirkwood> Have a clear graphic identity?

Luis: I'm not sure what that question means.

<Lauriat> 6. Use a process to work on Silver that can include more people with disabilities.

<kirkwood> mqaning give the guidelines a clear structure and identity so you know you are on them

Shawn: Ah, that makes sense

<Lauriat> 6. Use a process to work on Silver that can include people with disabilities.

Shawn: There are a lot of things that fall into that bucket.

<kirkwood> very good requirment!

Shawn: If everyone can think about this. Should we sent this to the overall community group. But here's our draft?
... should requirement 6 be requirement 1?
... will send this formally out to community groups. Letting them know it needs wordsmithing, simplification of structure, etc.
... then reconvene on tuesday and talk about revisiting project planning in light of these requirements will help.

<Lauriat> trackbot, end meeting

- DRAFT -

Silver Community Group Teleconference

18 May 2018

Attendees

Contents

AccessU & GAAD Recap

Requirements draft

Summary of Action Items

Summary of Resolutions

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