Silver Community Group Teleconference -- 05 Apr 2019

<CharlesHall> presenting twice on GAAD

<CharlesHall> (again)

<scribe> Scribe: Chuck

Shawn: <scribing protocol discussion>
... We did talk with overall wg on Tuesday.
... We talked through motivation, scope and a possible addition.

Motivation: "Supports and motivates... to be more inclusive... intent is to give orgs path to greater accessibility"

Sean: Q was brough up on measurability.

s s/sean/shawn/

<Lauriat> Current Requirements draft: https://w3c.github.io/silver/requirements/

Shawn: Will pass a link to doc.
... Jean did you work on wording?

Jeanne: DIdn't get chance, will have it for tues.

Shawn: Scope. <read scope rapidly>. Want to avoid overloaded terms. Current draft makes good sense.
... Got very helpful rewording suggestion. Chatter around overall issue of historically with user agents not wanting to do anything, with us not wanting to set ourselves up for failure.

<Lauriat> Suggestion from Alastair: "The guidelines provide guidance for people and organisations that produce digital interfaces. As part of that guidance there is some coverage of browsers, authoring tools, and assistive technologies."

Shawn: Alistair posed a suggestion.
... <reads>

<CharlesHall> -1 for the term “interfaces”

Shawn: Softened the overall requirement from "need to provide guidance" to a general widening of scope, saying it "can include" some of these things.
... re interfaces, fairly overloaded as far as tech is concerned.

<someone> Can we use "user experiences"?

Shawn: That's more in line with what someone was meaning. Charles?

Charles: That better aligns, interfaces is too overloaded. Also currently misused in the industry.

<Lauriat> Tweaked rewording: "The guidelines provide guidance for people and organizations that produce digital user experiences. As part of that guidance there is some coverage of browsers, authoring tools, and assistive technologies."

Kim: I get what the wcag group is saying, but I don't want to say there is some coverage in browsers. Rather say that we encourage EVERYONE to participate. Goes beyond content authors.
... Trying to think of better wording.

<someone> You are trying to make it as expansive and inclusive as possible....

Kim: Right

<someone> Would include browsers, but a bunch of other things that we don't even know about.

Kim: Yes, exactly. This includes everybody that touches the ITC community. Really broad but not saying we are writing specs.

Shawn: I think thats one of the balances that is difficult. We make it clear we will include some guidance for browers and AT etc without claiming to write the entire spec.

JF: What about "diverse stakeholders"? including. My concern is if we say ITC that sounds too specific.
... If we say "including"... and enumerate an non-complete list, it's not limited to that list.

<dboudreau> +1 to that as well

bunch of audible plus 1s

<CharlesHall> also re-thinking “digital user experiences”. the experience is what the person thinks, feels and remembers. not the thing itself.

<KimD> The guidelines provide guidance for people and organisations that produce digital user experiences. Our intent is to provice guideance for a diverse group of stakeholders including browsers, authoring tools, and assistive technologies.

Shawn: Which draft... <breaking up> I don't know where to fit in "diverse stakeholders".

Kim: Just threw in some text. We can discuss and improve.
... <reads> Something like this. Does this work better?

Jeanne: I would add content authors first, then browsers and AT.

JF: For those of us that showed up late, what's the URL?

<Lauriat> https://w3c.github.io/silver/requirements/

Shawn: Is there a better word that we can use besides "content authors"? It has two very different meanings. WCAG definition, and personally it means people writing "copy" and writing content that goes in.

<someone> you mean...

Shawn: For wcag definiton of content, it includes front end developers as well.

Kim: We can say content creators.

<CharlesHall> …people and organizations that produce digital {need word for entire future facing scope of websites, apps, {n} platforms}

<LuisG> "someone" is dboudreau

Jeanne: I think it will be ok.

<KimD> updated: The guidelines provide guidance for people and organizations that produce digital user experiences. Our intent is to provide guidance for a diverse group of stakeholders including content creators, browsers, authoring tools, and assistive technologies.

JF: +1 to Kim on content creators. Not everyone is an author. Graphic artists for example.

<Lauriat> The guidelines provide guidance for people and organizations that produce digital user experiences. Our intent is to provide guidance for a diverse group of stakeholders including content creators, browsers, authoring tools, and assistive technologies.

Shawn: Tweaked. Updated version.

Chuck: how about adding "but not limited to"?

Shawn: I'll defer to others with expertise.

<someone> Listing these is good, but putting "but not limited to"... what all are we going to add to this list? Is it too specific, is it too comprehensive? Some platforms may not have a browser.

<JF> "...including content creators, browsers, authoring tools, assistive technologies, and more."

<someone> Authoring tool is generic, should everything be generic?

JF: I tossed in a minor edit. "... and more"

lot's of positive comments.

<someone> Same challenge exists on the phrase "digital user experiences". Experience comes from around the digital thing, not the digital thing itself.

Charles: I put in IRC that we need to put in a better word for....

<someone> sounds simple.

<JF> +1 to Shawn

Shawn: I don't think we need to do this here. These are the requirements for the first incarnation of silver. We don't need to claim that we will encompass all. Just trying to expand scope.

<someone> What about a word like "asset"?

JF: along same lines, digital is the right terms, though I understand Charles' concerns. This is not really applicable to bill boards and physical environment. There is a limit to what we are scoped around.
... And the scoping term "digital user experience" doesn't feel that wrong to me.

<someone> Did you mention that the audience is the working group?

<JF> "Working Group and other invested parties"

Shawn: I think we want to share it with the public. Primary audience is the wg. They're the ones that we've been pushing to read and vote on requirements. We will share it broadly, but not many people in real world will read this.

Kim: Focusing on what John said... what about "guidelines provide guidance for people and orgs that provide...."

<KimD> The guidelines provide guidance for people and organisations that produce digital assets and technology. Our intent is to provice guideance for a diverse group of stakeholders including including content creators, browsers, authoring tools, assistive technologies, and more.

JF: I would go for "and" and not the "or". but I like that. It nails it. That's what we are trying to do.

Kim: Makes the two sentences relate to eachother better.

+1 to that.

<JF> +1

Shawn: Any other thoughts?

<dboudreau> +1

<jeanne> +1

<KimD> +1

<AngelaAccessForAll> +1

<LuisG> +1

<CharlesHall> is technology too vague?

Shawn: Giving the wording we are tlaking through, don't have better suggestion.

<CharlesHall> +1

Kim: We'll have to touch later, but I think it's better.

RESOLUTION: Arrived at proper wording for scope. "The guidelines provide guidance for people and organisations that produce digital assets and technology. Our intent is to provice guideance for a diverse group of stakeholders including content creators, browsers, authoring tools, assistive technologies, and more."

Shawn: We talked through two potential additions.
... Both came from Andrew. He wanted to establish guidance that doesn't result in overlap of sc (or whatever they will be called). I think we want to, but not needed in requirements. Too specific. Thoughts?

Luis: I agree with you. Might be too much.

Denis: If you think that's too much I side with you.

Luis: It's a good idea/practice to keep each sc or equivalent as unique as possible. At some point it's going to get ... there will be overlap like in wcag. I think that's how we naturally work.

Shawn: Something we talked through with wg is we are already working to improve situation, picking apart sc, regrouping together, making the guidance so that it doesn't have as much overlap. Need to keep in mind, but too specific to be a req for top level.

Kim: I agree.

Jeanne: Easy to fail.

Luis: Easy as a principal, but doesn't seem right either.

Shawn: We could include in project plan, ...guidance... "btw keep this in mind..."

<dboudreau> sounds good to me

<KimD> +1

Shawn: We had another addition, clarity around ...
... <pulling up survey results, posting from notes>

<Lauriat> From Andrew: "Clarity around partial or substantially effective conformance?"

Shawn: Overall idea is for the cases of if you have 2m page site and one image on one page in corner used for loging purposes doesn't have alt text. Having conformance model say that because you fail that you don't fail in totality.
... I think we have this already covered. One other aspect of it...
... At least multiple ways to measure, because it mentions things like task completion, can be expressed in those terms. Andrew brought up, we should discuss.

Jeanne: I pushed back heavily, need for it showed up in the research. It became difficult to do in prototypes. Sounds good in totality but I ... I pushed back. Don't want to put in reqs until we know how we can do it. Lot of people said they wanted it in there.
... Criticism that silver is aspirational. I'm concerned about putting somethign aspirational in reqs. Especially when we know it's hard to do.

Shawn: In my understanding, there are two different ways to address this. One is the conformance model itself (what we tried to do before, we can still look at this), the other aspect is the conformance claim docs.
... I don't think we were planning to write it up for first incarnation of silver.
... For wcag there are ways to say "we mostly meet this, here are the exceptions".

Jeanne: That's actually not correct. VPAT claims conformance. WCAG doesn't have that. it's all or nothing.

Shawn: That's the conformance model in wcag. People can write up "we mostly conform".
... Q I had is does that cover this well enough? Or could it? If we don't end up including this in conformance model, we can still give people a way to document ...
... "we didn't meet everything in totality, but here's how we meet it..."
... Not trying to advocate for or against. Just trying to understand what we are talking about.

Jeanne: The example he gave was (someone gave) If you have 1M images on site, one or two missing alt text, "you fail". We worked on last summer and this was difficult. We postponed and moved on.
... Doesn't always work for individuals with disabilities to say "90% you pass".
... People don't have experience we have trying to find solution for this, and having major issues with possible solutions.

Shawn: We have "task based assessments". That way you can say "90% of our tasks meet requirements of functional user needs, these 3 over here have problems." That becomes expression of impact to users.

Jeanne: And the prob we ran into last summer, what if one of those 10% is the login?

Shawn: Then everything fails.
... That to me is a part of a task based assessment, because it's about the task. If it's a critical image, then it fails, but if it's a minor image, it doesn't necessarily prevent a user from completing a task.
... ...let's have a difference between all 1M images is broken vs 1 of 1M is broken.

Kim: You have to test every single image of every single page and every single link and you have to test the entire product to assert conformance. If we have to test EVERY inch of the product before we make a representation...
... That isn't feasible for us.

Jeanne: would never work for facebook, which adds content fast.

JF: For that one image that doesn't pass, it could be a significant/critical barrier. We have to marry these things together.

Jeanne: We shouldn't make it a requirement until we do figure it out.

Luis: Even with task based assessment, etc, we ... in that one it's essentially all or nothing within that scope. Not all or nothing at a page level. ...doesn't make sense to me... as Jeanne was saying...
... ...once we figured it out, then we would know what kind of requirement to put in.

Charles: There's another perspective that's missing... the task based assessment and any other from of measurement is AFTER a think exists. The guidelines are for how to create the thing in the first place.
... Should address the beginning and address how to prevent these things from coming into existance. That is all on the remidiation and evaluation side of the thing that exists instead of being up front...
... And saying "authoring tool maker, prevent these bad things"

Jeanne: I agree, but we have many legacy products. Retrofitting is a reality.

Charles: I understand, just don't forget the other end of the process. Guidelines are telling you how to make it in the first place.

Shawn: The entire reason for having the conformance model is to assess it's conformance to these standards. I think the point that it doesn't make sense to add this as a req is that it's too tied to wcag is valid, good way of putting it.
... 2 q, do we want to just not include it and call it out? We couldn't do it because it's too tied to existing conformance model. OR can we look at it from that standpoint and decide what kind of wording COULD we do
... in a way that would address that concern in the wg.

Chuck: This is a "sticky" topic. I understand why they passed it by.

Shawn: We have opportunities for conformance model. In req themselves around the conformance model we have multiple ways to measure and provide broad support for regulatory environment.
... That covers it well enough, we don't need to add more, but others in the wg disagree. Maybe there's something we can add that's a less specific req that addresses their concerns, maybe we can add it.

Chuck: seem to be lacking ideas...

Luis: We could maybe put something in... thinking of like a partial conformance claim that could be made. It wouldn't be like "silver conformance", it would be "we support these user needs at these levels".
... For certain tasks for certain user needs, giving silver, bronze, gold rankings. The fact that we have these rankings for parts of conformance maybe we put something in related to that. That's still not solidified.
... We haven't decided that this is how it will end up. It's how we are planning to do it. ...

Jeanne: My concern, because you worked on the conformance sub-group, it's a hard problem. I'd hate to lock us in to something when solution is different.

Luis: Best solution is to NOT include it. We talked about it, we couldn't come up with anything that was productive. It would lock us in too much where we need to be flexible.

+1 to not including it.

Jeanne: And it's a goal we want, but it's proving to be more difficult than expected.

<AngelaAccessForAll> +1 it's too early to tackle it.

Kim: Would it make sense to put in a placeholder for that? Without commiting? So wcag folks know we value it but we don't have it ironed out.

Luis: Something popped in, what if we just said "full page conformance will not be required for full site conformance"?

Shawn: Doesn't make sense to me.

Luis: Something like that. So that just because you have one thing wrong doesn't mean you fail everything?

JF: What if we say score is holistic as opposed to a full page conformance model.

Shawn: One is full page, one is full site. I like the idea of focusing on that aspect. Want to come up with wording that doesn't compare to wcag's words.

Jeanne: If we are writing something it has to be measurable?

Luis: We should not include it.

Shawn: I have a note at the moment. Not adding.

Luis: Any statement we make would be too general and not measurable.

<Lauriat> Justification for not including: Not adding, as we need to figure out the conformance model for Silver before we can really know that we could feasibly do this.

Shawn: Do we want to include a note that we want to make this happen?

Luis: Yes. We want to say we align with them, but can't make the requirement YET.

<Lauriat> Justification for not including: We want to make this happen, but we need to figure out the conformance model for Silver before we can really know that we could feasibly do this. As such, we don't feel that we can add this as a Requirement.

Chuck: ...at this time

<KimD> +1!

<Lauriat> Justification for not including: We want to make this happen, but we need to figure out the conformance model for Silver before we can really know that we could feasibly do this. As such, at this time, we don't feel that we can add this as a Requirement.

<dboudreau> +1 :)

<jeanne> +1

<AngelaAccessForAll> +1

<JF> +1

<Rachael> +1

<KimD> +1

<JF> +1

RESOLUTION: Justification for not including: We want to make this happen, but we need to figure out the conformance model for Silver before we can really know that we could feasibly do this. At this time, we don't feel that we can add this as a Requirement.

<LuisG> +1

Shawn: We can work on a call for conformance.

Much cheering from the team.

<Lauriat> trackbot, end meeting

- DRAFT -

Silver Community Group Teleconference

05 Apr 2019

Attendees

Contents

Summary of Action Items

Summary of Resolutions

Scribe.perl diagnostic output