W3C

– DRAFT –
Cognitive and Learning Disabilities Accessibility Task Force Teleconference

26 June 2023

Attendees

Present
becca_monteleone, DavidSwallow, Jennie, kirkwood
Regrets
-
Chair
-
Scribe
becca_monteleone

Meeting minutes

<Lisa> close item 5

<Lisa> not yet quarum

<Lisa> scribe becca_monteleone

<Lisa> wcag update for rachael

Rachael: AG expecting to publish 2.2 in late July. Moving to new WG charter after that. Changes include defaulting to W3C decision policy that is more informal.

Rachael: planning on testing new process to move to a single channel. Currently hard to track conversations across meetings, emails, github, etc. Moving to Github. Will be circling back with COGA to make sure it is as cognitively accessible as possible.

Lisa: What will those accommodations look like?

Rachael: Examples include - github doesn't support threaded conversations - so if a conversation gets lengthy or splits topics, chairs will either move new topic or summarize. Talking about linking Google docs that make things easier to read; linking within agendas. Largely manual labor from chairs.

Rachael: fewer people able to do PRs.

John: Appreciate efforts from chairs to make Github more readable to people less familiar with Github. Could there be training for people around rendering and surfacing info on Github?

Rachael: Steps 1) document and ask COGA for feedback; 2) offer multiple trainings that will be offered multiple times and recorded, including one focused on screenreaders

Rachael: This will be a social transition and a technical one

Jennie: Suggest two types of training for COGA members - 1) having several bite-sized trainings on specific tasks that replicate the kinds of tasks we might have to do; 2) training for other assistive technologies like text to speech tools.

Rachael: Making note of these suggestions

Rachael: Make requests for AT-specific trainings so they can be responded to

Lisa: Any changes need to be tested for their usability among COGA and potential COGA members who may be put off from joining if there is a technological barrier

Lisa: We have never managed good communication, tracking or anything using Github because the threads are difficult to follow, notifications overwhelming, unclear what has been read and not read, tracking issues/changes, etc.

Lisa: I would strongly suggest that this is the wrong route if you want to be inclusive.

John: I echo Lisa's concerns

<Lisa> potential COGA members included the coga comunity

Rachael: Chairs are open to an alternative, but current situation is not working either - email alone, meetings alone, etc. are not working either

Lisa: COGA has used Google Docs, but that is not always usable with screenreaders. Suggested to Michael to test with Microsoft Office

Lisa: Microsoft is a similar type of collaboration tool to Google Docs, so that may be easier. Other more fringe collab tools like Zoho. They may volunteer their services or use diversity budget

Rachael: Microsoft and Google don't provide the kind of tracking we need for public comments or organizing the workflow. Considering using Google docs in conjunction with Github

Rachael: Let's try out process with Github (with google docs) and continue the conversation from there

<Lisa> next item

Lisa: from APA; COGA had been reviewing wiki; Jennie has transfered to more developed draft

<Jennie> https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/16-xub9rYg5K-wDcFozHzdtcCX5Y_dLKS

Jennie: document located in new folder for collaboration tools. Read Me document includes instructions and links

Jennie: Have added comments from previous COGA response document to current draft

Lisa: Add to top of current draft list of what documents we have merged into this document

Lisa: Better to collect fresh comments or to make sure all previous comments are present?

Jennie: We need to discuss this. John made a comment that some of the information in this note is out of date. We also have a lot of scoping questions that have not been well-defined in current draft

Jennie: Depends on what COGA has capacity for.

Lisa: I found the doc really hard to follow. It is hard to tell if our comments are in the correct section. For example, comments about plain language in 1.2.

Lisa: I think what is needed is a new section about understandability. This is where you'd have recommendations for plain language, making content findable, etc.

Lisa: Current structure, section 3 is co-editing, section 4 is annotation/comments, section 5 is version control, but there is no general section(s) for the different objectives we have in content usable

Lisa: I think sections 1 and 2 are introductory and about scope. Section 3 is where we start talking about user needs

Jennie: I agree the document could be more usable. Can we identify short-term/long-term goals for COGA feedback?

Jennie: short-term could be discrete feedback; changing out words/phrases/adding new section. Long-term could be suggesting a document refresh/restructure to make more usable

Lisa: Our comments need to be structured in line with their document - Insert User Need, Insert Requirement

Jennie: Yes, this could be our short-term goal so that there could be a github issue for each suggested new user need/requirement

Lisa: Using suggestion mode, let's insert those user needs directly into the document based on the comments, since the comments are hard to follow.

Jennie: Adding instructions and how to get into suggestion mode at top of doc

John: We need to make sure that we have the right user needs identified here. Can we optimize our comments/suggestions for github?

Lisa: Need volunteer to process our current comments and write as user needs.

Lisa: There will be more from Content Usable.

Lisa: Will do initial pass, asking Jennie to review after

Lisa: hoping to complete within 2 weeks

Jennie: will try to do review; balancing workload

Jennie: Having the entire team go through this document is important, considering AG's plans

Lisa: Our comments are not understandable enough. Task is to translate our comments into user needs/requirements through suggestion mode.

Lisa: Is this necessary before we can review the document to identify missing user needs?

John: both methods could work

Jennie: I think there's 2 levels of comments. Some are specific to adding something to the location; some are capturing new user needs.

Becca: Would be helpful to have user needs written in suggestion mode

Lisa: will try it out with a few examples and have a side-by-side comparison we can discuss next week

+1

Lisa: Internationalization subgroup; do we want a co-chair for that subgroup and when can we initially meet? Will revisit when more members present

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

Diagnostics

No scribenick or scribe found. Guessed: becca_monteleone

Maybe present: Becca, John, Lisa, Rachael

All speakers: Becca, Jennie, John, Lisa, Rachael

Active on IRC: becca_monteleone, DavidSwallow, Jennie, kirkwood, Lisa