Introduction

World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI) Accessible Platform Architectures Working Group (APA WG)

• review of W3C specifications
• development of technical support materials
• collaboration with other Working Groups
• coordination of harmonized accessibility strategies within W3C

Review of specifications

• W3C wants specifications to address all users
• APA reviews for ability to meet needs of users with disabilities, and not create barriers
• Review requires expertise on a growing number of technologies
• Early review could be incomplete, later review could be too late

Self review

• Groups should be able to determine what applies to their technology
• Include accessibility at use cases and requirements stage
• Frequently groups do not have accessibility expertise

Current W3C Guidelines

• Web Content Accessibility Guidelines - content features
• User Agent Accessibility Guidelines - browser and assistive technology support
• Authoring Tool Accessibility Guidelines - content development support

Framework for Accessible Specification of Technologies

• Provides information to technology developers about accessibility needs
• Currently structured as a draft standard and checklist
  • Full framework: w3c.github.io/apa/fast/
  • Checklist: w3c.github.io/apa/fast/checklist

User needs

• In many guidelines, user needs are implicit, not explicit
• Many guidelines only address subset of user needs related to their audience
• FAST attempts comprehensive documentation of user needs across all potential web technologies
• User needs drawn from existing sources, like WCAG 2.0, JTC 1 User Needs, ISO/IEC 30071-1, various gap analyses
• Primary research outside of scope for FAST, but Research Questions Task Force identifies some research needs

Example user needs

• Content perceivable in form other than produced by author
• User can navigate content effectively
• User can manage distractions
• User can avoid personal risk
• Users can discover content on the page
• Recover from errors

These needs are higher-level than seen in other guidelines, but do have more detailed break-downs

Meeting user needs

FAST desribes 3 approaches to meet user needs:

• technology features
• author implementation
• browser and assistive technology support

Combining approaches

• There can be different ways to meet a given user need
• Some ways can be met with just one approach
• Other ways require different approaches working together

Example: color contrast

User need: user needs higher than average contrast between foreground and background colors

• Browser: Provide a "high contrast" mode that overrides author colors
• Author: Provide a feature to allow users to define their own color preferences
• Technology plus author plus user agent:
  • Technology provides color definition semantics that allow colors of common object types to be globally remapped easily
  • Author uses these semantically defined color mappings to allow user global preferences to be easily applied
  • Browser supports semantically defined color mappings to allow users to define global preferences that are easily applied across a range of content

Optimal approach

• The most optimal approach to meet a user need varies by circumstance
• Any of the approaches in the example are sufficient if supported
• The third approach in the example requires different parties working together
  • Technology provides a feature
  • Authors use the feature
  • Browsers expose the feature

Identifying technoloy feature needs

• FAST attempts to identify the various potential ways to meet each user need
• Some of the ways to meet user needs depend on technology features
• The set of technology features needed is the guidance FAST provides to technology developers

FAST checklist

• Extracts just the technology guidance from FAST
• Intended to support self-review by technology developers
• Categorized by types of technology features to help focus on ones relevant to the particular technology
  • If technology allows visual rendering of content
  • If technology provides author control over color
  • If technology provides features to accept user input
  • …

checklist

Status of FAST

• Draft posted with introduction and structure
• User needs collection partially complete
• Feature need identification very preliminary
• Technology guidance mostly in the checklist for now

Future work

• Focus on checklist to help technology developers in the near term
• Complete user needs collection
• Complete feature identification
• Relate to and cross-check with other accessibility guidance

Ways to Contribute

• File issues in GitHub: github.com/w3c/apa/issues/new
• Send email: public-apa@w3.org
• Participate in the APA Working Group: w3.org/WAI/APA/participation