Silver Community Group Teleconference -- 15 Oct 2019

Challenges document - quick update from AGWG meeting

<jeanne> Janina: We presented the Challenges document at the AGWG meeting today

<scribe> scribe: Chuck

<pkorn> Trying to get onto the audio WebEx. Technology is just not my friend today.

Jeanne: One interesting comment from Alastair. His suggestion, will we give a categoric exception, or thinking about giving individual exemption into individual guidelines. No answer.
... Interesting way to look at the issue. We can put that in our back pocket.
... Janina gave summary of this morning. We spoke about publishing the doc. Shawn and Jeanne discussed about publishing the challenges in Nov, but plates are full, so will not have time for this doc.
... Lower priority for us. We can reference it, not formally in a W3C way, but we can link to it from explainer, and that we are working on it.

PK: What's the mechanical work of publishing. Can someone (Janina) take this on?

Janina: I can take this on, willing to. I've got some sense of this.

Jeanne: It's not preparing the doc, it's getting it done and agreement with wg so that they stand behind it, and then getting agwg to stand behind it. Both groups have to vote for it.
... It will take some effort to get agwg to support the first draft.
... I expect it to be some work.

PK: I appreciate that it's 3rd in line. If there's anything we can do to do the work to make it simpler and easier to increase the odds, we are eager.

Jeanne: sounds great.
... We can link to it from the explainer, I'd like to.
... You take in the more general comments we got from research 3 years ago, made them much more detailed. I thought that this was a very positive presentation. Minds were changing.
... I was pleased.

PK: I read through WCAG EM, David suggested that it was substantially duplicated. But I don't see it.

Jeanne: I don't either.

PK: Other than the stronger language that conformance in wcag is only for a page, and a claim is only for a page or a handful. that's much stronger language than what's in conformance challenges.

Jeanne: I will say that one of the interesting things about WCAG EM, Shetty and I spoke, the things that he was saying privately that couldn't go into WCAG EM because it had to be WCAG...
... formed a lot of my thoughts about WCAG conformance. that's part of my driving force for doing Silver. So we couldn't start making those changes. I haven't looked at WCAG EM for years.
... WCAG EM is not a reflection of that, its what he could work at the time.

Chuck: I scribe everything!

should be diplomatic.

Jeanne: Let's go back to what we were talking about last week with the minimums.
... I've got some notes from last week.

Jennison: I just joined.

Jeanne: We have some different proposals last week, and we got another one on the list.
... I'd like to start working this into a proposal we can include.
... Go through the sc and map to bronze, another one is to take the non-interference sc's.
... Also a suggestion to use user agent language. A proposal for easy checks, the way easy checks + non interference + some from coga
... Easy Check's doesn't include coga.
... Lanny Watson sent a email to the list ...
... Her's was to have no level in Silver.

<janina> s/lanny/leonie/

<jeanne> https://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-silver/2019Oct/0031.html

thx

Jeanne: She says "talked with colleague, had an idea, what if we didn't have levels or point targets. Good better best is arbitrary. Not legal absolutes. Cases still argued.
... Incentives could be achieved in other ways. Use a single scale, 0-100.
... In legal cases score can be used. A single continuous scale could simplify the scale.
... Thoughts or comments?
... We have to have a minimum anyways. Even if argued in court, the fact that WCAG AA is widely accepted as minimum, cases are settled on that as a minimum. We need a minimum for regulatory.

Jennison: To your point, with no minimum, conversations in companies would be around what we have to meet. Ideal state is that everything is met. In some places that wouldn't cut it.
... Conversations would be easier.

<pkorn> Chuck: not opposed to the idea of sharing these minimums.

<pkorn> Chuck: but if a website were to ignore some area (e.g. Coga), it could still have a score, but would be poor for that ignored area.

<jeanne> Chuck: I'm not opposed, but I can see that if a web site does not cover one area, but could have a score that is poor for one community, like COGA, so that group would not be well served.

<pkorn> ack

ack Chuck.

PK: Concern I have with all of this discussion about minimums in the context of <garbled> troubles me.
... Lawsuits I see today are based on WCAG 2.x conformance model. It's based on a model of perfection. We've been talking at top of hour about how WCAG wasn't meant to be applied to an entier website. Just a page or collection in a process.
... Subsetting 2.0 AA doesn't change the fact that if that's all we do, and we say "trying to be helpful for lawsuits", doesn't change the fact that folks are going forward, regardless of WCAG 2.0 A, AA, Silver.
... Still a perfection model.

Jeanne: I haven't been thinking about it as a check every page model. We are talking about minimums of ... like a safety bar.
... I haven't talked about it being a model of perfection for many years.
... Not my intent.

PK: What took me there was putting this in the context of lawsuits. As I understand them, that context is a 2.0 check every page context. If all we do in service of lawsuits...
... is say "doesn't need to be all of 2.0 AA", we aren't getting at the problem that's behind the lawsuits. If we put this forward that is in a context that's separate from lawsuits...
... As we move forward with silver we are trying to find a starting place, maybe a wood rather than a metal. If that's all we say, great. If we put this out there as something useful for lawsuits, we do a disservice.

Jeanne: To push back a little bit, biggest proponents are lawyers. If I said lawsuits I meant regulatory. Regulatory has needs we want to address. We don't have to address with perfection and test every page.
... They know it's not practical. We aren't locked in. We've got a lot of evidence and stake holders asking for a change. We don't have to worry about that. We do have to worry about AGWG approval...
... But other people want to see this change.

PK: If we say "this is one piece of changes", and we note some other things we are working on, that addresses my concern.

Jeanne: I want to do that. There are drafts that say variations on that.
... I need to pull some of the drafts together, and take some of the work that's already been done and put that in clear terms. So that it will ... we can include it in first public working draft.
... We have to get away from "page", otherwise we will never get away from websites. Page is too limiting.
... We have to change it.

PK: Agree

Jeanne: Any thoughts about getting away from levels? Even if we had a minimum?
... Would it make it simpler if it's just a score? Jennison had a good point that we wouldn't be able to protect certain groups being left out if it's just a score.
... Any other thoughts?

Angela: Not sure what we already discussed about the score. I've a thought. We use a similar system to measure things in my current department. There's no real value given to some of the scores.
... We wonder if the score is good enough, or if there's a way to improve. Would the score be indicitave of how well a user group would be able to access web info?
... Did you discuss already? That's my thought.

Jeanne: We had talked about people taking points from the methods, but having it be an overall score of how well a group with that disability would be able to use the entire site. We've never talked about that.

Angela: Good to know.

Jeanne: Could be hard to test. But if we allowed cognitive walkthroughs, as a way to test...
... Or if we had some clear ... if we said "in order to score points for 'no vision', it has to be programatically determinable, keyboard accessible'... the things each group would need, I'm afraid you would need everything.
... Somebody else?
... An idea Angela on what you would say... how you would figure it out? It's an interesting idea.

Angela: I haven't thought all the way through it.

Jeanne: A few ideas would be good.

Angela: I'll think on that.

Janina: We should ask Leoney to join us, not a good time for UK. She's a creative thinker. She could expand on her email.

Jeanne: She does come sometimes. Never the Tuesday evening one. But the Friday. I will give her feedback that we have and invite her to come and talk to us.
... Any other comments?
... We'll take a look at the idea that we had reached... consensus around ... take the way easy checks, add no interference, adapted to a site not individual pages, add some things important for coga.
... I dropped a note to coga and asked for them to talk a few minutes about it, but I couldn't attend the meeting. I'll try and catch this week.
... Find out what the minimum for that... any other thoughts from last week?
... Who wants to work on turning this into a proposal that we can review and vote on?
... Everyone is muted.
... Is there something else we should be working on? What would you like to be talking about?

PK: I don't mind continue working on my docs for november?

Jeanne: Some of the critique we get is that we haven't made good progress on conformance, and it's hard. This is an aspect that doesn't have a lot of interest, then I would rather work on something where the group is engaged.
... I've some things I think are important...
... Let's call it an evening and we will work some more on Friday. I encourage thoughts and emails. We need to move this forward. Any ideas privately are welcome, I could use the help.

trackbot, end meeting

- DRAFT -

Silver Community Group Teleconference

15 Oct 2019

Attendees

Contents

Challenges document - quick update from AGWG meeting

Summary of Action Items

Summary of Resolutions

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