W3C

- DRAFT -

Silver Community Group Teleconference

12 Nov 2019

Attendees

Present
jeanne, Lauriat, CharlesHall, Chuck, bruce_bailey, Makoto, janina
Regrets
Jennifer, Cybele
Chair
shawn, jeanne
Scribe
jeanne, Lauriat

Contents


<CharlesHall> sorry, I type really slow and am surrounded by distraction :/

<bruce_bailey> https://docs.google.com/document/d/1fE0OZnOGmndBEGo_EI8L8fNWsHfhv3ww6zz-v7CiBn8/edit

Reviewing the alt text draft & writing process

<jeanne> scribe: jeanne

<Lauriat> Scribe: Lauriat

Jeanne: I spent a lot of time over the weekend working with Cyborg, and she researched the emails that went into putting together the writing process.
... I haven't had the chance to regroup with her on this, but the emails come from after CSUN in March and before the draft in June.
... In the larger plan of how to write content, I think we captured all of the points from part one and moved them to part four.
... I think groups started working through part 4 while actually going through part 1, which led me to move those parts to part 4 where they belong (explainer).
... I'd like to start by looking at alt text guidance: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1fE0OZnOGmndBEGo_EI8L8fNWsHfhv3ww6zz-v7CiBn8/edit
... Let's start by looking at what's going into the FPWD.
... The reason I'm proposing some drastic changes to the process is that I don't think every aspect of the process works.
... We spent so much time writing the user needs and creating sections in the user needs, that some portions of original alt text guidance didn't make it over into the new draft.

Chuck: What if we were to do a retrospective of this?

Jeanne: That's what we wanted to do here today.

+1

(to both)

<jeanne> https://docs.google.com/document/d/1jj_qjyRzB8NRVX4QUR1zmIGOhC48PteAURq2fcX3lj0/edit#

Jeanne: 1. Putting the writing of Get Started in Part 1 instead of Part 4
... 2. Portions of original guidance didn’t get into FPWD (like how WCAG breaks down non-text content in the SC)

Chuck: You're saying that there's content in the original SC that didn't make it in here?

Jeanne: Yes.
... We knew with color contrast that we knew we had to fix the problems with the WCAG formulas, and Clear Words was new.
... Alt text had pretty clear guidance that we knew we didn't need to really change, aside from maybe adding guidance around clear language used.
... It should've been more of a straight migration and it wasn't. I'm not saying it stemmed from anything the group did, I think it stemmed from the process, which lacked looking at what already exists and needed to be applied.
... That's why I want to fix the process.
... I should ask, Makoto: did you discuss this and decide to leave any of it out, or did it not come up?

Makoto: That's what I've been thinking about. As alt text is very basic, there are so many stable documents, so we don't have to reinvent wheels.
... I'm trying to cite existing materials to the get started tab of alt text. Cyborg is recreating, so I was confused, actually.

Jeanne: I want to apologize, sincerely, that's my fault. I talked with Cyborg often and certain activities mentioned should have made me realize what was going on so we could have fixed the process earlier.

Makoto: If today, I got direction from this call, we could do it again using the existing WCAG documents.

<Zakim> janina, you wanted to say part of the alt text problem may be the rear guard action we had to engage with html 5 development

Janina: Relating to the WCAG 2.1 timeframe, we were still fighting a "rear guard action" around HTML5 development. A lot of good work has been done at the core of the problem here that we should incorporate.

Jeanne: Thank you! That's where we started, was noting that there's a lot of good work already done around alt text that didn't make it into the draft.
... Alt text was really our touch point for testing the process, as it was a much more simple move. Since that didn't happen and important sections got left out, that points to a process problem.
... The group working on it didn't have everything they need, and I want to fix that.

Chuck: Cyborg was heavily involved in this, but couldn't make it on the call today. Will we reach out to her as well?

Jeanne: Talking actively with her, yes.

<CharlesHall> my lesson unlearned: not clear what(where) the end format and template to get there are that a process needs to get to

Jeanne: Bruce asked me to do a new template, and I'm working on that. After Friday's meeting, I spent a lot of time on the process document, and once done, I'll link to it from the process document.

Charles: We've gone in circles and tangents, so hard to keep track of things. We went from the migration doc to smaller groups working on individual documents, and that followed a process depending on who was involved.
... The process document and template changed as we went through the process, and it's been hard to track the goal of an end format that we need to work toward.

Jeanne: Was it not clear that we were following the information architecture prototype and plain language prototype?

Charles: Because they were prototypes, it was not clear. Different aspects kept changing.

<jeanne> Template draft: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1Smly4XDxfzfXHa7AoUxoLXLy_3PdOXMkh0ZwtgksSPk/edit#heading=h.8j6pwbsnl608

Jeanne: Do you have a suggestion for how to improve that?

Charles: Nothing other than clearly labelling things and where they're located. "This is the latest template"

Jeanne: We talked about that last week as well, and I got a number of suggestions on how to better organize and label things.

Chuck: A question for you, Charles. Is it that the process document location was in flux, the process itself, or both?

Charles: Both. I volunteered to take on a piece of writing and haven't had the chance to devote as much time to it as I would have liked.
... Along the way, I encountered a moving target of where to even start.

Chuck: We faced this as well, where we were formulating a process as we went.
... Would it have been better if we had pre-crafted the process? It felt like kind of a chicken and egg problem, where we didn't know what process we should following without going through it first.

Charles: I don't know that I have an answer for that in this context. Greater awareness and clarity of the actual tasks that need to be included in content creation.
... At least clear parts of what to work on.

Jeanne: I'd like to add another lesson learned. The groups didn't progress to testing, and continued worked on user needs for a long time.

Chuck: With color contrast, and how much shoring up it can have in Silver, there's a lot involved. The divergence/convergence exercise allowed us to break out of the model that WCAG has (pass/fail), exploring the possibilities.
... I won't dispute that it was a time consuming process.
... I liked what we went through and hope to continue when I ramp back up again.

Makoto: If we look at alt text draft and decided it needed to go in another direction, like the team should use the existing WCAG documents, the team would consider what we should add to it.
... Instead of color contrast, which needs to change drastically. I don't think alt text needs updating drastically like color contrast.
... If we chose another direction today, we could do it again.

Jeanne: For a WCAG SC being moved over directly, without major modifications like color contrast, how many meetings do you think you should spend on identifying the user needs?

Makoto: We won't need so many meetings.

<CharlesHall> outside of time invested, i think we still need to better define what a user need is in order to best standardize how we write it

<jeanne> Shawn: How can we better articulate the task at hand and how do we know the task is complete?

Lauriat: We should focus on task completion definitions, not number of meetings on task.

+1 to Charles

<Chuck> +1 to Charles

<jeanne> Shawn: Timeboxing is useful to see where the process is getting stuck, analyze that, and give it another shot.

<CharlesHall> +1 to Shawn comment that testing depends on how need is written

<Chuck> Let's define "user need".

<jeanne> Shawn: We have captured some lessons learned, and need to see what to change

<jeanne> ... Moving tasks from Part 1 to 4 is more of a solution instead of the problem

<jeanne> ... For portions of the guidance that didn't get into the draft. Put something in the migration map to say to check back. Note that it is dropping off and document why or why not it is included.

<jeanne> ... We linked to the SC and the Understanding documents and Techniques.

Chuck: What if we were to map WCAG 2.x content into our destination format in order to work around that in turning it into Silver?

Jeanne: I think that can have a place in our process, except for only those SCs that we know need to change (color contrast, info & relationships).

<jeanne> Template #

trackbot, end meeting

Summary of Action Items

Summary of Resolutions

[End of minutes]

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Default Present: jeanne, Lauriat, CharlesHall, Chuck, bruce_bailey, Makoto, janina
Present: jeanne Lauriat CharlesHall Chuck bruce_bailey Makoto janina
Regrets: Jennifer Cybele
Found Scribe: jeanne
Found Scribe: Lauriat
Inferring ScribeNick: Lauriat
Scribes: jeanne, Lauriat
Found Date: 12 Nov 2019
People with action items: 

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