W3C

– DRAFT –
Silver Conformance Options Subgroup

09 Jun 2022

Attendees

Present
DarrylLehmann, GreggVan, janina, jeanne, Rachael, Shadi, SusanaPallero, Wilco
Regrets
Azlan_Cuttilan, Mary_Jo_Mueller, Todd_Libby
Chair
Janina
Scribe
Wilco

Meeting minutes

Janina: Looking dividing up issues identified by the use cases document
… Getting different sub groups to work on different pieces
… This is a proposal from AGWG chairs and Silver facilitators

Janina: The work is to continue, although it may be in multiple sub groups

Gregg: The way to get consensus is not to work in separate groups. Need to get everything together in one place.

Agenda Review & Administrative Items

Jeanne: We're on the AGWG schedule for the 21st, to show a summary for use cases
… Last week we talked about needing a summary document. I started to draft it for this meeting.

<jeanne> Summary of Use Cases

Jeanne: I pulled sentences where there were paragraphs, bullet lists for the sub-headings. I'm waiting for a PR to be accepted so the links can work.
… In the introduction I put problem description, structure, etc. All should be a direct link.
… People can look at this and show what we're doing, but send people to the main document for a more substantive understanding of what we're doing.
… Our first step is to show what all the use cases are.

Janina: Do we know how much time we'll have on the 21st? Can we get that nailed down?

Shadi: I think we had 30 min, half of which we presented.

I'd love to hear Jeanne's second part about big picture, what to do longer term.
… That will decide what we want to discuss with AG.
… Summary sounds great, I'll take a closer look Monday.

Jeanne: It all starts to fit together talking about the plan.
… What the chairs discussed is that there are specific topics related to conformance that need to be built from the bottom up.
… We've tried for years to write a top-down conformance model and failed. The process the chairs follow is to identify topics that need to be solved.
… Have a group develop use cases, analyze those, and propose solutions.
… Once we have these figured out we can start building out the higher level on how we're going to handle the situations.
… What we thought we'd do is there are three groups working on topics; Accessibility supported, issue severity, and third party.
… Because we've done a lot of work on third-party in this group, we keep third-party. Issues related to severity goes to them.
… Related to accessibility supported should go to the supported group.
… What we want to do is have a central repository of use cases. That document continues to be developed and added to by other groups.
… Rachael suggested to rename this group to third-party, and we're open to feedback about this.

Gregg: I would suggest 45 minutes
… I suspect what will happen is to try and revisit issues all at a time. It's introductory. I guess at 45 minutes you'll have a long queue.
… On the overall approach, I think the chairs are making a big mistake.
… You need to think about this group of things as a whole. We don't need a full committee to talk about third-party.
… When they break it up into little groups is what they're asking is to triple the time of what it takes to get to resolution.
… What I'd try to do is to get everyone who's for and against, get them on the same call.
… I think having it in the group is breaking it up into little groups.

<Zakim> jeanne, you wanted to say that the groups are for 6 weeks

Jeanne: These sub groups are not standing groups. They are going to be short-term, they are to report to AGWG every 6 weeks, and may be disbanded after that.

Gregg: That helps some.
… That's much saner, especially if they don't start all at the same time.

Gregg: Can you turn on commenting on the page?

Shadi: I like the idea of thinking in different levels. There are some issues that could be addressed or helped on a success criterion level.
… For example I think that if SC 1.1.1 was broken down we'd differentiate between say a functional image vs a decorative image.
… This would map to impact. This issue has different impact. But also on designers, how easy it is to fix and to test for.
… Some issues could be helped by how we design success criteria.
… Other things can be done in the conformance section. These are over arching, not specific to criteria. But I think what the use cases identifies is that there is stuff outside the standard.
… I think we would make excellent ways forward if WAI provided guidance on policy makers, what the considerations are if you're writing policy.
… I think we should lay this out more, maybe this is the point we take to the group.
… There are things spread across different groups.
… .But also the more you break things up, I don't know how coordination works across groups.
… What I'm missing in this discussion is is there consensus on AGWG that we'd be developing guidance for policy makers. Either in AG or maybe in EO, and have that resource to provide guidance for policy makers.

Janina: I agree we should give smart policy guidance to regulators. I like our 3-part breakout for now, although ultimately it probably is just supporting documentations.
… or we could use RFC "MAY" language
… I'm nervous about small groups, but what gives me hope is the chairs intent to involve AGWG people who've not previously been involved. That's a critical problem.
… We have iterated. Getting people more involved in WCAG 3 work has shot us down many times over.
… Btw there's a technical error in 5.4.

Gregg: I think the summary will make a huge difference in presenting this.

<DarrylLehmann> +1

<GreggVan> NOTE ! : We are not proposing that all of these can be handled with the technical provisions of WCAG or WCAG conformance. Some might be. Some might need to be handled by policymakers later. Some might need to be handled by policymakers but we might provide advice to policymakers in a formal way.

<GreggVan> One idea: that we create a standard policy document to accompany our standard technical document so that we can promote harmonized policy in the same way we have promoted harmonized technical accessibility standards.

<GreggVan> All of this is up for discussion. The purpose of the Use Cases is just to put the issues all on the table to promote organized discussion and reaching consensus on what we should do - in our technical standard or in policy recommendations.

Gregg: I added an intro paragraph to it. I'll past that into the chat.

<Zakim> GreggVan, you wanted to say -- Congratulations on the 2 pager. it is very good - and will be most useful in getting the issues to the people in main group

Shadi: The intro currently says there could be a guidance document. Are we proposing AG work on this?

Gregg: Yes, second

Wilco: Agreed

Janina: I think we're in agreement, it's still a question on where to draw the line.

Shadi: There will always be discussions where things fit in, but identifying this as a work item would be useful.

<Zakim> jeanne, you wanted to say that the overall Conformance topic is scheduled for TPAC.

Jeanne: The overall conformance discussion is scheduled for TPAC. There will be a reminder on Tuesday about TPAC.

<janina> FYI: Yours truly will be APA Tuesday and Thursday at TPAC

Jeanne: It's important to have the smaller issues done so that at TPAC we'll have solutions on the table, and the entire group can work on the upper level.
… I like writing the policy document, but I don't see how this group has the bandwidth.

Shadi: That's why I'd like to raise that. We identified this needs to be written. Maybe it could be raised to WAI coordination.
… I think we signal that this needs to be written, now lets figure out by who.

Janina: If we agree a document like that is useful, figuring out who would do it would be useful.

<Zakim> GreggVan, you wanted to say -- we and to say we should make the policy document a standard - that can be adopted by different policymakers

Gregg: We haven't made any progress because we tried to stuff policy into guidelines. That's not where it belongs.
… Many of us who think this doesn't belong in the technical document do agree it needs to be addressed.
… We can make progress if we stop trying to make it into something it's not.
… I think it should be a standard, not a note. One technical standard, and one policy standard.
… We want to all agree on what the ruler is, and then agree on how much is sufficient. Industry needs both.

Janina: I'd like to start hearing some criteria on how to decide what fits where.
… Are there some criteria that helps us decide what to say to regulators, what goes in technical standard.

Shadi: The idea of making policy guidance into a rec is interesting. I need to digest that
… I'm not opposing it. Overall I support what Gregg was saying. I think conformance needs to be addressed, but I also feel some things do not belong in a technical standard.
… There are clearly policy aspects to something like how much time to address bugs.
… I don't think there are specific criteria. It's not about may's or should's, I would start with a table of content for that policy document, as we go along with discussions on conformance, things will shift back and forth.
… Some things will be in both. Some issues need to be addressed in multiple ways. You may find the same issue coming in both documents, or maybe even in more documents.

Janina: As long as we can agree that referring to multiple documents, I'm okay with that. We'll have to disentangle so we're not competing. It makes sense to start out drafting that way, and then hammer out clashes.

Wilco: I've been in favor of multiple WCAG 3 documents for a while. I think this should be in multiple groups.

<Zakim> GreggVan, you wanted to ask why 5 is not a subset of #4 It seems to be

Gregg: #5 seems to be a subset of #4. I would like to remove the word "directly". There's a discussion on what that means, we can discuss that later.
… An example under #4 seems to be #5. It might be better to combine them.

Shadi: You can cut and slice that document in different ways.
… The first one is about user generated comments. You can provide the possibility for people to add alt text for images, but can't ask much.
… Whereas selecting a CMS / payment service, it's being more thoughtful.
… It is trying to break down third-party. I think it's too big to be handled as one thing.
… There is a definition of second party, like suppliers. There are different levels of control.

Gregg: Thank you, that is clear

Shadi: I'm happy to try out smaller groups, I hear Wilco's concern. I'd be happy to contribute to policy guidance in any way, but I think the first thing is to talk to AG / chairs to talk about if there is buy-in.

Janina: I want to agree that third-party is far more than user generated. It might be enough to break down third-party in ways that need to be addressed differently.
… Minimum time we should take up 45 minutes for AGWG?

Shadi: I think 45 is a good idea.

Gregg: With an option for the chairs to decide to extend if needed.

Minutes manually created (not a transcript), formatted by scribe.perl version 185 (Thu Dec 2 18:51:55 2021 UTC).

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Maybe present: Gregg