Meeting minutes
Agenda Review & Administrative Items
JS: Analysis to discuss
… candidate definitions for the glossary to show
… Calendaring and announcements
… next week is a holiday is some jurisdictions
PK: I am not available
JS: Hearing no objections, we will not meet on the 11th and will meet on the 18th
… We will not meet on the November 25 - US Thansksgiving. We would meet on December 2,9,16 and then not meet until January
PK: Due to a variety of rules and processes within Amazon, our ability to fund Janina as a part-time contractor is coming to a close. Her function has been taken over by Shadi Abou Zahra, so Amazon will not be able to fund Janina's contribution after next week. We remain extremely engaged in this work and will have a full time focus on this work.
<shadi> [[/me not actually full time on AGWG but fair amount of focus]]
JS: As far as this group is concerned, I will remain temporatily for this group and am looking for another sponsor to fund my work at least through the end of this year.
PK: My gratitude to Janina for all she has done representing Amazon.
<shadi> +1 to Janina
Janina++
JS: The future is a little unclear but I am willing to volunteer on this work for some time.
<KimD> +1
Analyzing conformance challenges and scenarios
SAZ: I don't have a tangible document yet. This will be more abstract.
… it is a collect of scenarios and examples
… trying to put them together
… I am trying to be more granualar about the types of things we are talking about
… We talk about a challenge that is big, like User Generated Content or Media
… when it goes to the larger group, there can be hesitation, because it is a large chunk
… I want to break it down into smaller pieces
… what is the role of a technical standard?
… what is the role of the behavior or what the the accessibility behavior has to do?
… what is the policy?
… where does the responsibility live for accessibility?
… today we have a chain of responsibility.
… specific example
… YouTube is an example -- who will caption all the cat videos?
… that provider needs to make sure the funcionality is accessible
… WCAG doesn't address this because it is covered by ATAG
… the platform owner can help the author provide captions, or automated captions
… the content provider who puts up the video. It may be useful to split off personal items with different expectations
… ifk the person is a professional business they would have more strict provisions
… the third part is WCAG the right place to address these situations, and is there a policy level that needs to be put on top of this approach
… maybe there is more that needs to be done. The policies that just say "implement wCAG" and that is putting a lot of pressure on WCAG
… maybe we should provide guidance to policy makers instead of trying to include policy in WCAG.
… I hope it is a way of laying out a road forward
… so we get the accessibility improvements we want to see and not trying to do everything in WCAG
PK: I appreciate the difference between standard and policy
… it helps us to spend some time thinking about it
… it's a long term undercurrent of the disquiet
<Zakim> jeanne, you wanted to talk about the needs identifie4d in Silver research
Jeanne: Interested to look at it this way, but I want to be sure that we loop back and look at the needs from the Silver research.
<shadi> +1 to not losing identified needs
Jeanne: It listed a number of these problems that stakeholders want us to address.
… I appreciate the experience in the policy area, around implementing WCAG, but I think we have a responsibility to our stakeholders to address the concerns they have.
… It would be a mistake to overlook that research.
<jeanne> https://
Shadi: Hope to cover as many as possible.
Wilco: I feel a little surprised, at what seems to me like a pivot
Janina: Goal of it is to go for a direction that will leave to less resistance.
… To the example of uploading content. I think we would agree, what we say of user generated, if it's a user uploading to YouTube, we have one set of expectations.
… Getting captiosn, YouTube can automate them, is that enough? Maybe we want them to offer the opportunity to correct.
… But a major entity of some kind using the same platform, we have a different set of expectations.
… I think that is a useful thing to look at.
Peter: Taking user generated as an example, an important point raised; when is a user a user and when is it a company? That's not something a technical standard is well equipped to decide.
… That's not as much a pivot, as another piece that needs thinking.
… By doing that I think we'll be able to do a better job of bringing others along.
Gregg: Not sure I understood user as a user, or user as a company.
Peter: I'm distinguishing between for example Wilco's nephew uploading a video of his cat, vs a company that publishes commercial videos.
… That's a very different entity. One of the concerns raised, if we create an exemption in WCAG, if the thing comes from a third-party you create a perverse incentive to spin off a third entity.
… If the site is a hoster of videos, there is stuff they can do to help content creators to make it accessible.
… Holding them responsible for adding audio description to every video, getting that through is a real challenge.
Gregg: If the author is a person, or the author is a company, that helps clarify.
… We'll also have to figure out where we draw the line between acting as a regulatory agency and not.
… If you create a ruler, others can decide whether or not that needs to be applied, and what measure needs to get to.
… If we decide that for everybody in all jurisdictions this needs to be applied. Then we're taking away regulatory.
… The danger is if people disagree, they'll have to create their own.
… This is a minimum standard for accessibility. You should be doing more. This is the strength of BSG levels.
<PeterKorn> Sorry; network issues.
<PeterKorn> Will rejoin audio in a moment.
<PeterKorn> Back
Gregg: One challenge is trying to balance doing at least this much, without getting overly descriptive so that we don't push people into deciding we've gone too far and they'll have to cut provisions out / changing conformance.
<Zakim> jeanne, you wanted to talk about harmonization - we don't want to leave this issues inconsistent across the globe
Jeanne: One of the concerns I've heard is where we draw that line is extremely important to harmonisation.
… It would be difficult that's posting corporate videos on YouTube to meet different standards in different places.
<KimD> +1 to Jeanne
Jeanne: As attractive as it is to say "lets make the difficult questions policy", I think we're sherking our responsibilities, to stakeholders and members who need to do business around the world.
+1 to Jeanne
Peter: I like the ruler analogy. We're not just holding up a ruler, we're putting tick marks on the ruler, which can help policy draw the lines in places that make sense.
… The absense of a tick mark around user generation, and describing all the things a site that hosts videos can do to increase the likelyhood uploaded content will be accessible. The absence of that is why we've seen a distinction in policy.
… Had there been tick marks on the ruler of what could have been done, the policy might have gone further than it did.
Mary Jo: We're already seeing some divergence in standards, in EN for example, which is now being changed by other countries. We don't want that happening with WCAG.
… If we had some gradation on compliance, it would help policy makers that might not be as well versed in accessibility.
<Zakim> JF, you wanted to note that the Protocols idea also encompasses "Policy" (ref: Maturity Model)
JF: I envision the protocols provision as going this direction. There are levels of "applicability". Entities can do as much as they can do, and acknowledging what they can't do.
… Public accountability is the important part, and probably what regulators want to see.
… UK isn't looking for perfection, but working towards perfection.
… Thinking of policy, getting to draft policies might be one way forward.
Shadi: There's no intent to contribute to fragmentation. I don't think it's about drafting policies or anywhere near that.
… I think with WCAG development so far we've focused on the technical aspects, and saying policy makers need to do their part.
… I feel that in WCAG 3 we're starting to take up some work that is policy maker work, some policy makers haven't done their work.
… One idea is to have guidance for policy makers, in order to apply WCAG properly.
… When you see the details I really want to hear more where there is a potential for fragmentation.
Glossary Initial Draft Definitions https://www.w3.org/WAI/GL/task-forces/silver/wiki/Conformance_Glossary_Candidates
Janina: I've tried to define terms that keep coming up, where it seemed to be useful to get more consistent about what we mean when we say those terms.
… Some of these were literally assigned to us. Substantially refresh, what constitutes that?
… Want to draw attention to the two C's. I think we'll have some things to say about what needs to be done.
… The expectation is we would have something to say. We try not to say too much, but something. What that is we need to figure out.
… Somethings depend on laws and regulations, some things we can lay off on compliance, and others we can lay conformance on.
Michael: Conformance is defined in other WAI documents. I think we want to use a common definition.
… Some other terms we don't have exact words. Platform in particular comes to mind.
… We should do harmonization to avoid duplication.
<MichaelC> https://
Janina: Correct, need to look at Michael's Google Doc from WAI CC
<jeanne> ATAG has a definition of author <- https://
<maryjom> +1 to W3C harmonizing the definitions AT LEAST within the org.
JF: I cleaned up some formatting issues.
Mary Jo: Regarding definitions, +1 to harmonising within W3C. We also see differences in definitions between standards orgs. If we can make them harmonized, that would be extremely helpful.
… As people who have to adhere to these standards, especially when they scope things like ICT, platform, etc. It helps to know what the requirements apply to.
Janina: Glad this start has the potential to be helpful.