Meeting minutes
Calendar Planning
lionel: Off 30th, Feb 13, and 20
lionel: Unsure of Feb 6
Sharon: Not off the 20th
Lionel: Nor I
Lionel: I am off the 20th
lionel: Will try to be here the 6th
Welcomes & Intros (if we have guests)
janina: Reports on attendance at Chn Accessibility CG last week, they're joining us on the 30th
Update on recent meetings
janina: I attended a recent Accessibility for Children CG meeting. They've been working with Sliver (AGWG TF). They've looked at the first Adapt CR request and saw intersections in our work.
… I've chatted with Suzanne and we found that we have a lot in common, and may decide on our next attributes based on some user scenarios they may be presenting to us next week.
… Distractions seem important. Anything that helps you take complexity and narrow it down, and sequentially work through it.
… Being able to focus on specific parts of the puzzle is very importnat.
… Interesting congruence with the COGA needs.
… It's like learning piano: taking each piece at a time, and practicing it, and gradually assembling them.
Lionel_Wolberger: chunking, and sequential seem like important words.
janina: Wondering if we want to rename some of our terms, e.g. distraction is only a distraction if it's _not_ what you want right now. Maybe we should look more at how to organize things in specific ways.
… They have over 100 attributes in their example.
… There was a presentation about a study that had been done under NSF funding, by Bob Dolan (sp?).
janina: They have been working on ontologies and taxonomies to describe relationships between various learning elements.
… This would support different renderings for different learners.
… This goes beyond the established Dublin Core ontology.
… ( https://
matatk: Note Janina attended the meeting advertised (but not minuted) here: https://
janina: They were also interested in incentivizing people to learn, and there was a key focus on sustaining engagement.
… They learnt it's very important to facilitate the students' agency in the process, which aligns with our work.
janina: The term they were using for coping with the level of information, as described above, was "density control".
… They are looking to support kids to be better decision makers. So a big part of it is teaching people how to make good decisions.
janina: From our COGA background, I think we have good concepts, but feel we should revisit the naming of them.
janina: There's research that altering line spacing, type, etc. affects comprehension, but there was concern that other events (having breakfast, or arguments) might have more of an impact. The literature focuses on what is easy to measure.
Note that members of the CG will be joining us next week, per https://
Sharon: Have they looked at our docs?
janina: Yes, they've read our explainer.
janina: We are all interested in "kerb cut" technologies/approaches, that help everyone, and people with specific access needs particularly (e.g. captions).
Lionel_Wolberger: That's an example of reinforcement of the information.
Lionel_Wolberger: Symbols could be one of these.
janina: Yes, and I have an email to forward to the list on that front.
Global Symbols meeting
Lionel_Wolberger: We had a great meeting with E.A. Draffan and David Banes of Global Symbols.
… A lot of support for the sort of work we're doing. They also referred us to other tools such as [AAC] board builders, and a Bliss symbol design tool.
… We talked about the idea of having a board builder that could map between symbol sets (like Bliss and ARASAAC).
… They had some concerns, e.g. some symbols are two characters in Bliss, but one in other sets. Also Bliss is a generative language.
… E.g. cartwheel is two symbols in Bliss but one in ARASAAC.
… We will need to consider these, but don't expect them to be showstoppers.
… We talked about symbols being mostly used on devices.
… We wonder if these devices _might_ be based more on web tech these days.
janina: I think we should adapt the board builder case into our explainer.
… AAC symbols have been successfully used for a long time, but for communication as opposed to content (e.g. textbooks). We haven't found them in web content.
Lionel_Wolberger: They told us that symbols have one known use besides communication, which is to promote literacy.
janina: This ties into the email I referred to above.
janina: Literacy can be a challenge for some d/Deaf people, as it can be much harder to learn English.
Lionel_Wolberger: What should our next steps be?
janina: We have been meeting with Bliss in order to get the Registry published. Matthew and I are to take over ongoing management of the registry spec. We had one scheduled that was forgotten in the first week back, but we're going to have a follow-up.
… In that meeting, or the one after, we should invite E.A. and David.
janina: We need to facilittate the "how to handle cartwheel" sort of discussion.
Lionel_Wolberger: We would also like their support with implementation.
janina: They should be able to help with mark-up.
Lionel_Wolberger: Headlines about _partnerships_ bewteen different organizations will be more impressive, as will the work.