W3C

– DRAFT –
Clear language subgroup meeting

05 03 2023

Attendees

Present
abbey, jeanne, JohnRochford, julierawe, Katy, kirkwood
Regrets
-
Chair
julie
Scribe
jeanne

Meeting minutes

<julierawe> https://docs.google.com/document/d/1JKJ32DK_A82ahsQ_k0RVPc-ZYpX5uuKtuGOLdo2OqyY/edit#heading=h.ho88uer4k9cv

Julie: What is the latest update with the AGWG chairs and what should be included?
… we are aiming for 20 outcomes and one outcome built out with a Method and Test

Jeanne: We have a meeting later this week. The latest I heard was that we were only going to do Outcomes

Julie: We are going to keep #11 for now and keep a note for now about possibly removing it.

JohnK: Facial Expression isn't really
… "implied meaning"

Julie: Is it "non-verbal meaning"?

JohnR: "Non verbal Cue" is the correct label
… I like the label better but I think it should go.

Julie: Item 12
… Paragraph length, with conditional tests that give flexibility for bronze Silver gold levels

JohnK: I don't like "divide long text". Break up long paragraphs into shorter ones.
… one idea per paragraph is what is generally

Becca: We should also think about sentences per paragraph

JohnR: And words per sentences

Proposed: Break long text into short paragraphs that focus on one idea. Weighting process TBD that rewards content creators for having fewer sentences per paragraph and fewers words per sentence: X for Bronze, Y for Silver, etc.

Jeanne: I recommend not going into detail about Bronze and Silver in case the group decides not to do bronze, silver,gold.

Julie: Item 13 Ssection Length and Headers
… should we split them up?

Jeanne: there are two different tests. I think we should split them.

JohnK: What does it even mean in this context? It's not part of grammar

JohnR: HTML is a good example to illustrate what we are talking about.

Proposed: Section length: Chunk content into short sections, with a small number of paragraphs, to make the information easier to read and understand and to avoid overwhelming users.

Becca: I think we need more definition of a section -- is a horizontal rule a section?

Jeanne: from WCAG22 https://www.w3.org/TR/WCAG22/#dfn-section

a self-contained portion of written content that deals with one or more related topics or thoughts

Julie: Adding a new Outcome: Purpose of Blocks of Text.

JohnR: COntent Usable says to try to put the purpose of each block of text first

Proposed: Purpose of each paragraph: Put the aim or purpose at the beginning of each paragraph. This is especially important in sections with more than one paragraph.

Julie: Item 16: Lists

Katy: What is it breaking up -- bulleted or numbered?

JohnK: It breaks up walls of text.

Jan: It helps users focus on scannable information

JohnR: Bold text, italic text, colored text all help users focus on information.

Jan: Historically screen readers don't announce semantics of text.

JohnK: in basic HTML, <strong> is bold and <em> is italic

New item: Bold text, italic text, and colored text: Use text formatting such as <strong> for bold, sparingly to help users focus on information.

<Becca_Monteleone> +1 to Jan's point on cognitive load

Jan: we need to take into consideration that some people will not have the ability or knowledge to customize their assistive technology and it will be a barrier for them. It should work for the default settings of assistive technologies.

Jeanne: I'm concerned to make sure that we can find research on using bold text sparingly.

Julie: Colored text and links can be very distracting.

Jan: We have to think carefully about how that might be interpreted that we don't want designers not to underline links or use custom colors for links.

Jan: Maybe don't duplicate links on a page, that repeats of links are used sparingly because it creates duplication in the link list.

JohnK will look for research on this new Outcome.

Julie: Next meeting is the 11th to finish 17 to 23.

Jan: This is my last meeting until mid-November. Thanks for the leadership that Julie has brought to this group.

Minutes manually created (not a transcript), formatted by scribe.perl version 210 (Wed Jan 11 19:21:32 2023 UTC).

Diagnostics

Maybe present: Becca, Jan, JohnK, JohnR, Julie

All speakers: Becca, Jan, Jeanne, JohnK, JohnR, Julie, Katy

Active on IRC: abbey, Becca_Monteleone, jeanne, JohnRochford, julierawe, Katy, kirkwood