Meeting minutes
New Issue Triage
jamesn: one new issue, focusability of elements with aria-disabled
pkra: I think this can be closed, it was a question and was answered
New PR Triage
<aardrian> +present
jcraig: implementors have taken up a pretty strong stance that ARIA should stay an accessibility layer and not change mainstream functionality
jamesn: even with that, there are instances when it is useful to allow disabled things to become focusable
jamesn: no new PRs
WPT Open PRs
jcraig: nothing new
jcraig: if anything has been updated, let me know, otherwise we can move on
jcraig: also worth mentioning, the WPT a11y interop group did resolve to bring Valerie's work into the scoring criteria for this year's interop investigation. She's been working on taking the old core AAM tests that were difficult to maintain, and making it more automated so we can get some more results long-term out of this. Really impressive
work, called acacia, excited to see what comes of it
spectranaut_: next topic is TPAC, I think we'll have a meeting with the browser tools and testing to talk about acacia and getting that landed. There are unresolved kinks and questions, would be great to have the WG in the meeting.
jamesn: would it be nice to demo to the group what acacia can do in the empty slot?
spectranaut_: we can do that
TPAC planning
jcraig: I've had good results demo'ing things to overlapping groups
jcraig: there are different types of questions that come from different groups as well
jamesn: we have a wiki page with our proposed agenda for TPAC. We've put the topics into the various days and time slots, we have only one open slot that we can put acacia into, or we can have some other things
jamesn: if you have any issues, let us know so we can make changes to this
jamesn: we have two joint meetings, AGWG on thursday and APA on friday
jamesn: apparently the AGWG is to discuss WCAG 3 ARIA techniques, which is news to us
matt: apparently the APA group expect me to drive that one, it's related to having other content that's not currently part of APG better supported or integrated into APG. Things like the media accessibility, MAU
matt: and Using ARIA, which we've already agreed to take on. I don't know how meaty this can be, and I think the bigger challenge is that there are a lot of good ideas, or potentially good ideas. We don't have people to do the work. So I don't know how fruitful this can be, unless there are any people who are willing to work on these things. I'm
not confident that we need it.
jamesn: it's also on friday afternoon, so everyone will be wiped out
matt: I'm leaning towards not having it if it's totally up to me
jamesn: I'll ask Janina if there's anything else to ask during that meeting. I'd be quite happy to not have that meeting on friday too
Rahim: I had a question about the agenda setter and their role. Is their role to lead an effective session, outcomes, should we make a deck -- what should agenda setters be doing?
jamesn: I'm not going to tell you how to do it, having a deck would be helpful, but it doesn't have to be a presentation. Having something written down that's not just a topic, and having specific things to talk about and questions that need answering would be helpful. You can do that however you like. I assume there will be the ability to present
something on a screen in the room, and there will be remote participants as well.\\
jamesn: there's no formal way to do this, but having something is useful to prevent going in circles
jamesn: we scribe the same way, there will be a rotating scribe, we'll ask most people to try to scribe at least one session
jamesn: these are like normal meetings but more in depth and in the same room
jamesn: think of it like a deep dive sessions, where the successful ones have a plan and an outcome
jamesn: vs the ones where we talk around a topic without progressing it towards a conclusion
jamesn: some information about where all the cool people talk to eachother
Table without table headers
jamesn: this was filed, and I just want to know what our plan is for this. We have in the issue the code links to webkit's and blink's isDataTable implementation, and the gecko TableAccessible implementation
jamesn: scott had a related issue
jamesn: I don't know if folks think this would be a good idea or not, but it would be nice to detail in words or in an algorithm what each of the implemetations are and we can look to see where they are common and where they differ. I think it would be nice if all browsers treated them the same. If every table in every browser was either a layout
table or a data table the same way, that would be a positive
jamesn: aaronlev is on the queue and is going to tell me I'm wrong
aaronlev: you're right
aaronlev: don't get used to it
aaronlev: I talked to Brett-Lewis at Vispero, and they used to do it in there code, but now they use a variable in our code that tells them what our guess is
aaronlev: the algorithms are so similar, it shouldn't be hard to harmonize them. We need someone to go through the source code and harmonize them. You don't really need to know C++, and create a table
jamesn: could ChatGPT do this?
aaronlev: It could do it incorrectly
aaronlev: we just need a volunteer to do this, I don't think we need to evaluate this in a big group
keithamus: I volunteer as tribute
aaronlev: if you have any questions about the code, you can ping me
jamesn: you probably wrote most of it, right?
aaronlev: I wrote the code in FF, then found the code in Chrome had been copied from Safari, which had been copied from FF. The same comment code was there
jamesn: if we can get this in browsers and tests for this, that'd be awesome
jcraig: and then the layout list reconciliation
jamesn: that's going to be more c--
jcraig: inside joke
aaronlev: keithamus do you mind doing it as a google doc at first, and then turn it into a wiki? It'll just be easier to collaborate
keithamus: OK, google doc with a table, enumerating similarities and differences?
aaronlev: rows would be general rule, columns would be each browser, if they do it, and if they do it differently, then a column about why the rule is good or bad
jamesn: can everyone who wants to collab on this use google docs?
jamesn: sounds like we have progress, let's move on
Make aria-relevant and ariaRelevant reflect
jamesn: last one, I think this has been concluded, but I want to confirm because it's not the conclusion I expected
jcraig: what I missed was that this is what implementations do anyway, so I approved it
jamesn: so, no action needed?
jcraig: just needs to be merged
jamesn: need reviewers, I guess
spectranaut_: you can add me
Rahim: (also volunteered)
jamesn: no implementations needed, right
jcraig: I think there might be a line needed in a WPT test, but I think so. That'd be easy to add anyway
jamesn: believe that's it for this week