Accessible Rich Internet Applications Working Group Charter

Deliverables

In order to maximize the likelihood of achieving the success criteria described below, the ARIA Working Group will follow a work flow designed to see each feature from its road map through to completion, with ARIA feature development, platform accessibility API mapping, implementation, testing, and authoring guidance taking place at the same time.

More detailed milestones and updated publication schedules are available on the group publication status page.

Draft state indicates the state of the deliverable at the time of the charter approval. Expected completion indicates when the deliverable is projected to become a Recommendation, or otherwise reach a stable state. For deliverables marked as “living standard”, the Working Group intends to publish the latest state of their work as Candidate Recommendation (with Snapshots). The Working Group will publish Recommendations approximately every two years for specifications that define technology features. The Working Group will not publish Recommendation versions of Accessibility API Mappings because they define mappings to accessibility APIs, which may be updated independent of the ARIA technology.

Success Criteria

The normative documents produced by this Working Group fall into two categories: ARIA specifications and Accessibility API Mapping specifications.

• For the ARIA specifications, implementability and interoperability of every feature will be demonstrated by having at least two independent browser implementations of that feature. In addition, for the Accessibility API Mapping specification(s), each ARIA feature will be shown to have at least one implementation in each of: ATK/AT-SPI2, MSAA+IAccessible2, AXAPI, and UIAutomation.
• Every effort will be made to take member organizations' schedules into account and to ensure all platforms are included. If needed, an Accessibility API Mapping specification will be split into platform-specific specifications, e.g. one for ATK/AT-SPI2, one for MSAA+IAccessible2, one for AXAPI, and one for UIAutomation. This will allow each platform's specification to progress along the Rec track at the timeline that best suits them. For specifications which are not split apart in this fashion, no platform will be dropped out of the specification without prior consultation with that platform's owners.

Modules that reach W3C Recommendation are considered successful when all of the following are present:

• Production of stable documents addressing the work items listed in the Deliverables section.
• Test suites for each module with conformance criteria.
• Availability of multiple, independent, interoperable implementations of each feature with conformance criteria in each deliverable; as demonstrated by an implementation report (summarizing implementation status against the relevant test suite) for each testable class of product, including user agents.
• Deployment on multiple platforms.
• User community and industry adoption of the group deliverables.

In order to advance to Proposed Recommendation, each normative specification is expected to have at least two independent implementations of every feature defined in the specification.

Each specification should contain separate sections detailing all known security and privacy implications for implementers, Web authors, and end users.

There should be testing plans for each specification, starting from the earliest drafts.

To promote interoperability, all changes made to specifications should have tests.

Coordination

For all specifications, this Working Group will seek horizontal review for accessibility, internationalization, performance, privacy, and security with the relevant Working and Interest Groups, and with the TAG. Invitation for review must be issued during each major standards-track document transition, including FPWD. The Working Group is encouraged to engage collaboratively with the horizontal review groups throughout development of each specification. The Working Group is advised to seek a review at least 3 months before first entering CR and is encouraged to proactively notify the horizontal review groups when major changes occur in a specification following a review.

Additional technical coordination with the following Groups will be made, per the W3C Process Document:

Communication

Technical discussions for this Working Group are conducted in public: the meeting minutes from teleconference and face-to-face meetings will be archived for public review, and technical discussions and issue tracking will be conducted in a manner that can be both read and written to by the general public. Working Drafts and Editor's Drafts of specifications will be developed in public repositories and may permit direct public contribution requests. The meetings themselves are not open to public participation, however, except by explicit one-time invitation from the chair(s).

Information about the group (including details about deliverables, issues, actions, status, participants, and meetings) will be available from the Accessible Rich Internet Applications Working Group

This group uses the public mailing list public-aria@w3.org (archive) and several GitHub repositories. Additional communication channels are also used. The public is invited to review, discuss and contribute to this work.

The group may use a Member-confidential mailing list for administrative purposes and, at the discretion of the Chairs and members of the group, for member-only discussions in special cases when a participant requests such a discussion.

Decision Policy

This group will seek to make decisions through consensus and due process, per the W3C Process Document (section 5.2.1). The Working Group maintains specific procedures to establish and measure consensus and address objections in the Accessible Rich Internet Applications Working Group Decision Policy. All decisions made by the group should be considered resolved unless and until new information becomes available, or unless reopened at the discretion of the Chairs or the Director.

This charter is written in accordance with the W3C Process Document (Section 5.2.3, Votes) and includes no voting procedures beyond what the Process Document requires.

Patent Policy

This Working Group operates under the W3C Patent Policy (Version of 15 September 2020). To promote the widest adoption of Web standards, W3C seeks to issue Web specifications that can be implemented, according to this policy, on a Royalty-Free basis. For more information about disclosure obligations for this group, please see the W3C Patent Policy Implementation.

Licensing

This Working Group will use the W3C Software and Document license for all its deliverables.

About this Charter

This charter has been created according to section 5.2 of the Process Document. In the event of a conflict between this document or the provisions of any charter and the W3C Process, the W3C Process shall take precedence.