<scribe> Scribe: Karen

Nick: Welcome, Clinton Allen
... what we discussed last week is a lighter use of W3C tools
... prefer to use tooling that is friendly to the merchant community
... so you can raise your hand in Zoom, or use irc channel #merchantbg
... let me drop charter into chat

https://w3c.github.io/merchantbg//MerchantBGcharter.html

scribe: I have not heard any feedback yet
... if no further feedback, I propose that we accept the charter
... seeing no hands, I propose that we approve the charter

<dezell> +1

<nicktr> +1

scribe: please +1 in chat or irc

+1

scribe: thank you Adem
... next topic is what we want to talk about as a group
... Adem, is there something on your mind, specific topics for this group

Adem: I am here because as a digital accessibility consultancy, Intopia deals with ecommercie clients and services
... any discussion on this is important; it's often seen as too difficult to tackle in some circles
... get some general chat going around ecommerce style products, services and accessibility
... standardizing how that works is a pretty good idea

Nick: that is an excellent topic
... one of things that is an interesting tension online is balancing accessibility, consent, friction and all of those things
... that is a topic I am keen to explore

Ian: hi everyone, it's my first Merchant BG call
... Adem, I would love to hear in more concrete detail what you hear as being challenging to merchants in the accessibility space

Adem: the biggest thing is that tension between...
... many of our clients, want to be/have nice, flashy, new tech
... but none of it is...
... if you look at framework used
... they try to jump right in to use the latest single page app, get my online store up and running
... and then they run into accessibility problems
... because they have not considered how the tech interfaces with assistive technologies, or with the backend
... they don't consider it from the beginning of the journey and the tooling side of things

Ian: yes, thank you

Nick: thank you, Adem; it's 8am for you?

Adem: yes

Nick: Clinton, did you have thoughts about things you would like us to be discussing with merchants?

Clinton: Like Ian, I have not participated in a group like this before, I would like to see how this goes and help provide information
... I don't have a clear answer yet

Nick: no worries, wanted to ask the question
... there are some other things I am thinking of
... it would be tremendous to hear about work W3C does in the accessibility space
... I have been talking with Josh O'Connor, one of the accessibility leads to get a flavor of all the activities
... it is a complex space to explore
... I am keen to develop a primer
... what are the important things; where should a merchant start

David: Hello everybody
... I want to echo what Adem said about accessibility
... I have been around W3C and been in a number of groups
... Web of Things has been fruitful
... they don't jump on accessibility, but think about accessibility as being multi-modal
... WoT has possibility to look at multiple factors if they are in a customer present environment
... other things could work from home
... we have found WoT to be helpful in addressing the accessibility problems
... which are 15x greater in COVID environment
... security and privacy
... and the ability to sell substances with regulatory controls in person or online
... there are a number of W3C technologies that are adressing those points
... decentralized identifiers
... and also verifiable credentials have gained a foothold at NACS
... National Association of Convenience Stores, in some programs
... to make it easier for retailers to obey the law and make regulations
... a number of ways that W3C can help
... and skipping over the elephant in the room which is payments
... which merchants care about
... I'm attracted to accessibility as a moral obligation that W3C has taken on

Nick: To add to that
... you talked about payments
... and also float the idea
... around web advertising
... there is cross-over
... keen to explore that with merchants
... they use web advertising to drive traffic to their sites
... I want to hear how they think about web advertising
... do they look to providers or do they manage their own entries
... anything else anyone wanted to float as topics, or to volunteer to lead a session?
... David, not sure if you are able to speak to the retail use case from NACS for identifiers?

David: yes, I can be prepared in future

Nick: yes, we can schedule that

David: I can tell you this, with the pilot program, we have over 18K retail locations signed up for the pilot, so they are making real headway with it
... like most things in convenience channel, it is a "food fight"
... responding to advertising topic
... people go to third parties because the infrastructure is too hard to use
... probably because there are a number of things in the way; some of it is regulatory
... how do you manage what ads to show and still preserve privacy

Nick: yes, I agree
... having attended a couple of the Web Advertising groups, there is a lot of interest, and good, close debate
... I'm keen to explore it with the merchant community; how relevant it is to them
... I just don't know

<nicktr> Karen: picking up on Adem's point

<nicktr> ...what would a primer look like on A11y?

Nick: what I had in mind there, what are the common experiences of merchants
... when building their web sites
... and have that frame both positive and negative experiences, for those who thought aobut it first off
... and those who had to address it subsequently
... I know Coles had a very significant challenge there; they are now hot on accessibility because they were litigated

Adem: I could speak to that
... we were called in to look at the accessibility of the Coles' platform
... key thing is the check-out experience
... from an accessibility and web commerce POV
... the check out flows are the most critical

<Ian> Adem: Search, browse, and checkout

Adem: putting together some standard guidance, or whatever it might look like
... to standardize that starting point, or that leg up
... if these are your core flows, these are the kinds of things you need to watch out for
... and how to get some standardization between them

Nick: that is exactly what I had in mind as well
... a living document
... a consensus around the most important things
... we don't want it to be a highly technical document; here are some core principals, and some collective wisdom
... not about writing specifications

s/check-out flows/search, browse and checkout flows

Ian: there is an opportunity to frame the work of this group
... and model what ecommerce looks like
... and to start to provide broad guidance for people and then narrow for expertise
... so establish scope as ecommerce experience
... what it's like to build ecommerce experience on the web and all the different considerations
... to build an international presence
... for example, what are privacy, accessibility, search, check-out capabilities
... like boiling the ocean a bit
... but include all the bits
... this work may have been done
... talk with Shopify for example, because they build some of those pieces for people
... so perhaps start with starting point for big picture
... start to document good practices and then do deeper dives
... if you are looking to build an accessible web site, then you look to WCAG guidelines
... but then bridge the gap and look to some high-level points
... for privacy, what are good practices
... using or not using DNT, using session management

<scribe> ...new topic moving from log-in and password to web authentication

UNKNOWN_SPEAKER: so a process to go through
... and get help on things like regulatory considerations from people in different parts of the world
... I suspect there are companies who do this and could help
... or start with making the check-out button accessible
... my experience is that boiling the ocean is the wrong thing to do, but my mind goes there
... it would frame all of the conversations moving forward, because it fits into that comprehensive model

Nick: Do we want to move on?
... there is a good list of topics
... hearing accessibility, payments identify, privacy
... start to identify people who want to work on that
... and this brings me to one of today's topics is driving participation and bringing in more merchants to this conversation
... Alan and Karen we have talked about other groups to engage [NACS, MAG, Vendorcom]
... Adem, are there groups in Australia?

Adem: I'm happy to share some names of retail companies in Australia

Nick: and what about merchant side at Amex?

Clinton: I would have to dig into that more

Nick: I don't know either; it's an honest inquiry

Clinton: A lot of merchant interaction is through USPF
... that level
... one reason we are looking here is opportunities to grow that

Nick: I know some of our members like Worldpay have merchant forums that we will try to access

Karen: GS1 has offered to help with getting the word out

<nicktr> Karen: Interest also from GS1 to get people involved

Nick: A large number I suppose...

Karen: yes, millions

Alan: yes, GS1 is the standardizing organization for bar codes, merchants of all sizes
... and they are W3C members

Nick: We were talking earlier today in web payments about some of the QR code use cases
... it would be good to get merchant perspectives as well

David: we talk to the US people at GS1
... cannot speak for Amber, but Liz worked at either InBev or CocaCola
... turns out that as far as printed packaging, the sunset is 2027
... QR codes are not happening fast
... on screens they will predominate

Nick: That sunset date, David
... is that the US industry moving from 1D to 2D by 2027?

David: yes, that's the idea; far enough away that no one will faint
... identifying products...with only nearfield comms
... problem is packaged goods industry; this will cause them a lot of money
... just wanted to throw out there; and 2027 dates was first time I had heard that date

Nick: Is there any other business to talk about today?

Clinton: I am interested in payments around QR
... I imagine it's around a number of loyalty offers; a wider ecosystem

Nick: We are interested to explore what merchants are using QR codes for on the web
... stocking, payment, loyalty use case
... and another use case raised by @ from Intersekt
... when you are browsing the web site, on your mobile, and there is a QR experience
... on a desktop you would put your desktop screen and phone together, but if only mobile, that is an interesting use case
... that is one merchant use case; there are lots I'm sure we can dig into
... Ok, in that case, let's talk quickly about next meeting, every two weeks
... Next meeting is Monday, November 23rd at 21:00 UTC
... thatnk you everyone for coming along
... speak to you in a couple of weeks

rrsagent draft minutes

This is scribe.perl Revision of Date 
Check for newer version at http://dev.w3.org/cvsweb/~checkout~/2002/scribe/

Guessing input format: Irssi_ISO8601_Log_Text_Format (score 1.00)

Succeeded: s/fo/for/
FAILED: s/check-out flows/search, browse and checkout flows/
Present: Karen_Myers Adem_Cifcioglu Alan Alan_Bird Ian_Jacobs David_Ezell Karen clinton_allen
Found Scribe: Karen
Inferring ScribeNick: Karen

WARNING: No "Topic:" lines found.


WARNING: No meeting chair found!
You should specify the meeting chair like this:
<dbooth> Chair: dbooth


WARNING: No date found!  Assuming today.  (Hint: Specify
the W3C IRC log URL, and the date will be determined from that.)
Or specify the date like this:
<dbooth> Date: 12 Sep 2002

People with action items: 

WARNING: No "Topic: ..." lines found!  
Resulting HTML may have an empty (invalid) <ol>...</ol>.

Explanation: "Topic: ..." lines are used to indicate the start of 
new discussion topics or agenda items, such as:
<dbooth> Topic: Review of Amy's report


WARNING: IRC log location not specified!  (You can ignore this 
warning if you do not want the generated minutes to contain 
a link to the original IRC log.)