W3C Automotive Activity

Janina Sajka, Linux Foundation

• background
• Linux, Web, VoIP and additional expertise
• accessibility community at W3C
• Ted's experiences supporting accessibility as Head of Systems Team (IT) for W3C

W3C Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI)

W3C as a helpful locus of accessibility expertise providing:

• Normative Specs, e.g. ARIA, WCAG
• Best Practices & Informative Notes
• Janina chairs Accessible Platform Architectures (APA) WG
• APA's mandate includes emerging technologies

Accessibility and Travel experiences

• Janina's ride hailing experiences as well as other modes of travel
• Ted's cab sharing story that indirectly led to him joining W3C

Hurricane Floyd, September 1999 left up to 13 inches (325 mm) of rain, wind gusts of up to 60 mph (95 km/h) affecting NYC

Transportation sector technical advances as an enabler

• Excitement around autonomous vehicles
• Importance of individuals' autonomy (independence)

Factoring in Accessibility into Data model design

• Profiles and individual needs, conveying to vehicle operators, rental and ride-share companies etc
• Vehicle capabilities
• Geospatial data considerations - granular location, building drop-off/pickup considerations
• "Intelligent Transportation Systems" would look rather stupid sending a [fill in the blank]
• Remapping of signals in vehicle to alternate controls or paired devices

Why introduce this topic now?

• Easier and cheaper to do up front than an afterthought
• Technologists generally like to do the right thing and improve lives
• Encourage you to make argument to management for including this in your designs
• Avoid costly litigation from lack of conformance to ADA, draw comparison to GDPR
• Marketshare not negligible - Estimated 15% of Americans have some form of accessibility concerns
• Good and bad examples - only name the good (eg Apple iPhone)

Question and follow up

• https://www.w3.org/WAI/
• Janina Sajka <janina@rednote.net>
• Ted Guild <ted+auto@w3.org>