06:23:39 RRSAgent has joined #ag 06:23:43 logging to https://www.w3.org/2025/11/13-ag-irc 06:24:39 Meeting: AGWG and Sustainable Web IG 06:25:01 present+ 06:25:42 present+ 06:26:02 rrsagent, make logs public 06:26:09 present+ 06:30:21 present+ 06:30:36 present+ 06:31:04 present+ 06:31:06 mgifford2 has joined #ag 06:31:22 morganm has joined #ag 06:31:22 nico has joined #ag 06:31:24 present+ 06:31:30 Hello present+ 06:31:32 present + 06:31:35 fershad_ has joined #ag 06:31:45 AlexDawson has joined #ag 06:31:46 scribe+ 06:31:48 mehm8128 has joined #ag 06:31:58 mgifford2: we're starting with a couple of presentations 06:32:01 https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1frHcoCbxJ45OtwA76CmgfNAE57W4rboW/edit?usp=sharing&ouid=104409146103753773756&rtpof=true&sd=true 06:32:05 mike_beganyi has joined #ag 06:32:11 present+ 06:33:11 present+ 06:33:28 mbgower8 has joined #ag 06:33:29 present+ 06:33:43 Lisa has joined #ag 06:33:59 tzviya: I'll give an overview of the WSG 06:34:40 present+ 06:34:46 present+ 06:34:59 tzviya: the WSG are divided over 4 sections, role based 06:35:20 tzviya: the first one is business, products and strategy, aimed at people making organisational decisions 06:35:26 tzviya: usually applies to the whole organisation 06:36:03 tzviya: then the next section is about web development, probably the one people are most familiar with here, includes things like avoiding unnecessary code. 06:36:37 tzviya: then next there's hosting and infrastructure, about things like data centres and using a sustainanable hosting provider 06:36:54 tzviya: then the last one has UX guidelines 06:37:07 Hello, My name is Morgan, I am a volunteer IE for the Sustainability Interest Group. Happy to discuss or add any notes about what we are working on and about 06:37:10 present+ 06:37:11 tzviya: the WSG has a lot of information on measurement. We spent a lot of time on this today. 06:37:24 tzviya: I won't go into much details but our measurement related stuff is quite different from AGWG. 06:37:41 tzviya: we took some inspiration re supplemental guidance from AGWG and the way Techniques work 06:37:45 present+ 06:37:54 tzviya: and we want to create a policy document like AGWG, thanks for th e idea 06:38:07 present+ 06:38:28 Slideset: https://www.w3.org/2025/Talks/TPAC/wcag3-update/ 06:38:30 tzviya: there are also a bunch of tools people developed that use the guidelines and present them in a different way 06:38:43 tzviya: we're happy to receive your feedback 06:38:55 tzviya: over to the update from AGWG 06:39:22 present+ 06:39:28 hiroki has joined #ag 06:39:32 Rachael: we have some general goals we try to meet with WCAG 3: a new structure that helps people understand the doc better, and we want to center the doc around user needs 06:40:01 The WSG's previous meeting with performance had a focus on the value of focusing on user needs. 06:40:19 Rachael: we tag our content with 'content maturity levels', so that we can develop the standard faster and indicate how far along each piece of content is, from placeholder, to exploratory, to developing to defining to mature. 06:40:29 Siri has joined #ag 06:40:57 denisDIDIER has joined #ag 06:41:07 Rachael: in general, the WCAG 3 structure has guidelines with plain language 'outcome statements', within those we have foundational and supplemental requirements, including how tos (methods and tests) and assertions 06:41:13 Present+ 06:41:34 Rachael: so the guidelines exist within a larger ecosystem of documentation 06:41:42 Present+ Denis_DIDIER 06:41:45 Rachael: assertions are a new concept within WCAG 3 06:41:53 Rachael: we don't have them in WCAG 2 06:42:13 Rachael: to allow for organisations to state things like 'we have conducted user testing' 06:42:58 kevin: this may be something relevant to the sustainability guidelines 06:43:04 shiestyle has joined #ag 06:43:33 Good to learn about the assertions. I hadn't realized that had been added. 06:43:45 kevin: we found that there are certain things that are hard to test, but still relevant to have organisations state and get credits for, that's why we came up with assertions 06:43:56 This is really valuable, new stuff for me 06:44:22 Rachael: here's an example of a requirement: “text can be increased in size to at least 200% of the platform's default body text size” 06:44:34 s/This is really valuable, new stuff for me// 06:44:51 Jaunita_Flessas has joined #ag 06:44:54 Present+ 06:45:11 Rachael: we are writing these reqs more granularly than we used to in WCAG 2…. we try not to put everything into on single sentence, we put exceptions and applicability info into a separate section to make it easier to read 06:45:30 kevin: an advantage is, it makes it easier to recognise what are good things to do 06:46:18 kevin: another thing we did was separate between different levels of specific requirements, so where automated captions are base level, human captions are a better version of it 06:46:36 Rachael: we want to highlight that we are trying to make WCAG future ready 06:46:51 q+ 06:47:20 Rachael: we are trying to make it implementor neutral and author centered. So that it is easier to have requirements met not by the author but by new technologies should they become available 06:47:58 q+ to respond 06:48:03 ack Jaunita_Flessas 06:48:04 q+ to respond 06:48:08 q+ 06:48:16 Jaunita_Flessas: in AGWG should we be try to focus on our carbon footprint from an ethical perspective. Should we think about advancing accessibility in a sustainable way? 06:48:23 tzviya: great question, let's leave this for the discussion part 06:49:00 Rachael: on slide 11 we have an example of an assertion: 'plain language review' 06:49:16 Rachael: this concept is really important to consider, though difficult to test, the assertions have a potential there 06:49:56 Rachael: we're exploring a conformance approach right now where there is a combo of foundational requirements and supplemental. Idea is that orgs meet all foundational requirements and then add a subset of the supplemental requirements, ideally picked against functional needs, we're exploring that now. 06:50:10 Rachael: conformance itself is about the foundational line 06:50:22 Rachael: this is a new approach departing from current WCAG, which has levels A, AA, AAA 06:50:39 Q+ 06:50:40 shiestyle has joined #ag 06:51:00 q? 06:51:33 tzviya: we are beginning to think about sustainability as a new area for horizontal review. We should think about how this overlaps with existing accessibility horizontal review 06:51:37 I'd love to learn more about the decision to go Foundation + Bronze, Silver & Gold - it might be worth mirroring 06:51:45 tzviya: I've not done anything formal re the carbon footprint of other specs 06:52:40 q+ 06:52:44 kevin: paraphrasing Jaunita_Flessas … should we add sustainability guidelines within WCAG? my answer would be no, they are separate guidelines 06:52:46 ack me 06:52:46 tzviya, you wanted to respond 06:52:48 q+ to say My understanding of what Janina asked was. 06:52:50 ack ke 06:52:50 kevin, you wanted to respond 06:52:58 +1 kevin (we've also avoided a11y guidelines within WSG 06:53:21 Jaunita_Flessas: if there's a more sustainable way to achieve an accessible outcome, we should be addressing those rather than the less sustainable version. 06:53:43 shadi has joined #ag 06:53:45 q? 06:53:54 chrisp has joined #AG 06:54:09 +present 06:54:10 meg has joined #ag 06:54:12 q+ to talk about requirements and methods 06:54:21 ack next 06:54:27 present+ chrisp 06:54:31 ack AlexDawson 06:54:33 q+ Question: "I was curious about the WCAG 3 concept of assertions trying to encourage or enable progress even facing aggregate or larger scale metrics that are bad basically. Trying to avoid the pass/fail all or nothing kind of thing. This seems like a strong common area of what we are working on" 06:54:49 AlexDawson: accessibility affects sustainability… the way you could reflect that in WCAG… eg what is the energy use of someone using assistive tooling? 06:55:08 q+ morganm to clarify assertions 06:55:27 AlexDawson: there could also be a considerable sustainable burden that is negative on a societal level, needs more examination 06:55:52 ack Lisa 06:56:05 https://www.w3.org/TR/coga-usable/ 06:56:39 q+ to comment on the tension between accessibility and sustainability 06:56:40 Lisa: tzviya, in your slide I saw something regarding whether we need images… images like icons can have a huge benefit for COGA 06:56:48 q+ 06:56:59 Lisa: when people can't access their bank they get in a car or a cab to go to the bank 06:57:52 q+ to agree with Lisa; not over-simplify cost of accessibility 06:57:53 As said before sustainability & accessibility compliance are horizontal different process. Sometimes they overlap, sometimes they complete each other. But because there is the PEOPLE dimension in sustainability, they are never very opposite. 06:58:06 +1 denisDIDIER 06:58:08 tzviya: the success criteria specifically mentions it not applying when it has positive value 06:58:50 q? 06:59:03 Lisa: we have to be careful re comprehension including for aging population 06:59:07 ack Jaunita_Flessas 06:59:07 ack me 06:59:09 JenStrickland, you wanted to say My understanding of what Janina asked was. 07:00:18 q+ to note something like performance aids both a11y and sustainability 07:00:19 JenStrickland: how I interpreted Jaunita_Flessas's point… there may be overlaps between AGWG and sustainability, note that we think about accessibility when we work on the guidelines 07:00:26 q+ to support horizontal review 07:00:35 shawn has joined #ag 07:00:36 Siri has joined #ag 07:00:41 JenStrickland: we probably should tag each other 07:01:01 JenStrickland: we might want to have ongoing meetings to answer each others questions 07:01:17 ack kevin 07:01:17 kevin, you wanted to talk about requirements and methods and to comment on the tension between accessibility and sustainability 07:01:19 ack me 07:01:21 JenStrickland: we do have AGWG and former AGWG members in SWING 07:01:37 We love accessibility! 07:01:45 Just checking that https://www.w3.org/TR/coga-usable/ was also included in the look at accessibility as it is NOT in WCAG 07:02:38 Thanks for the link Lisa COGA is doing important work. 07:02:39 kevin: thinking about requirements and methods in WCAG, there's a tension between accessibility and sustainability. We outline in requirements what needs to happen. We outline in methods how it _can happen_. The sustainability bit are probably related to methods. 07:03:37 q+ 07:03:51 kazuhito has joined #ag 07:04:01 ack morganm 07:04:01 morganm, you wanted to clarify assertions 07:04:02 +1 that equity must come first, but only when it's done in the most sustainable way 07:04:09 kevin: question is, how do we balance that 07:04:57 Good point wendyreid 07:05:17 morganm: wanted to ask about assertions… interesting development, could we learn from it more? 07:05:19 chrisp has joined #AG 07:06:07 shadi: don't think we'vef fully nailed down assertions yet 07:06:31 Link to info on assertions as it stands in the latest wcag 3.0 editors draft: https://w3c.github.io/wcag3/explainer/#assertions 07:06:53 q+ to content/tooling/org 07:06:59 shadi: in WSG, I saw the requirements about 'choosing an accessible provider'… this seems like a good use case for an assertion as it is not something an individual website author has anything to do with 07:07:12 shadi: 'overlays' 07:07:19 [collective groan] 07:07:20 Accessibility assistant agent based on AI, may be efficient for accessibility concerns, but we know environmental impact is huge. Should we make decision not to use this kind of tools ? Don't think so, but raise awareness for user to find alternatives with same features but less footprint 07:07:31 s/'overlays'// 07:07:50 Ines has joined #ag 07:07:59 q+ 07:08:44 ack shadi 07:08:44 shadi, you wanted to agree with Lisa; not over-simplify cost of accessibility and to support horizontal review 07:08:48 shadi: let's be careful we're not too simplistic, eg say adding some lines of code for ARIA that costs more… that framing can lead to false understandings, if we go down that orad 07:08:50 s/orad/road 07:09:01 shadi: +1 to horizontal review, that's a great approach for both sides 07:10:10 wendyreid: regarding the overlaps; there are things that are going to be a venn diagram between all the standards, not just sustainability and a11y, but even security, web performance etc… we, in AGWG, when we write about images, we can write about image formats that are smaller in size, eg use webp, not jpg, etc 07:10:26 q+ can we point to each other standards within our standards 07:10:26 https://www.w3.org/TR/web-sustainability-guidelines/#accessibility - a list of all the guidelines that relate to a11y 07:10:39 q+ to point to other standards 07:10:46 wendyreid: there are things like this where we can say 'pick the more sustainable option' 07:11:21 wendyreid: there's lots of opportunities for AGWG to work with sustainability when we have the opportunity to recommend the 'best option' 07:11:21 q+ 07:11:24 ack we 07:11:24 wendyreid, you wanted to note something like performance aids both a11y and sustainability 07:11:27 ack AlexDawson 07:11:51 chrisp has joined #AG 07:12:05 AlexDawson: one of the things we look at in WSG is guidelines that are good for people 07:12:08 q+ to can we point to each other standards within our standards 07:12:46 AlexDawson: the guideline could look at the actual tooling itself and encourage toolmakers to create more digitally resilient and more energy efficient choices 07:12:58 ack me 07:12:58 tzviya, you wanted to content/tooling/org and to point to other standards 07:13:03 Q+ 07:13:38 q+ to talk about document environment 07:14:10 tzviya: we had a convo with someone in the group who works with the French (semi) regulatory body and talked about how to organise and how to measure. I like to organise based on… which are about content? 07:14:17 q+ 07:14:24 tzviya: would like some way of flagging things that makes it clear that we have different things that are being measured 07:14:34 ack je 07:16:23 JenStrickland: the impact we have in sustainability isn't very big when one person meets a requirement, one person stopping with AI use doesn't matter as much as 50k people. However for accessibility we do care about one person specifically, as accessibility is a human right. 07:17:29 JenStrickland: when we think about WSG, we talk near-term, mid-term and long-term, machine-testable, human-testable, etc. For prioritising we have to balance those sorts of decisions 07:18:05 q- 07:18:05 JenStrickland: to measure impact, there's things like energy consumption, water consumption, e-waste management, carbon emission, resource extraction, material pollution, climate justice, supply chains etc 07:18:15 q+ to respond on priority targets 07:18:23 ack me 07:18:23 mgifford, you wanted to can we point to each other standards within our standards 07:18:26 JenStrickland: this to try and help explain what we do in WSG 07:18:44 +1 JenStrickland : Sustainability is a common / mankind / planetary goal, accessibility is person / human being right 07:18:56 mgifford2: when I was doing the horizontal review for i18n, I found there's an opportunity to link to other standards 07:18:58 +1 JenStrickland 07:19:19 q+ to comment on crossref 07:19:25 +1 to cross linking where it is appropriate... probably in methods 07:19:26 https://raw.githack.com/w3c/coga/research-modules-wd-1/issue-papers/Online-Safety-and-Wellbeing.html 07:19:41 Lisa: wanted to share something we're working on 07:19:46 Lisa: research paper from COGA TF 07:19:47 Adam_Page has joined #ag 07:19:56 Lisa: focuses on safety and well being. 07:20:35 Lisa: our focus is on cognitive learning and mental health. May be a huge area of synergy 07:20:38 Comment: Carbon footprint is a part of what its about but a big focus of our document is about design and and web development thats really good for whole teams thats comes with tooling up for accessibility. I really see so much in common and mutually supporting. The experiences are better, the products are better. I see the technical differences 07:20:38 between keeping things clean and organized but the methods and goals really support. 07:20:56 ack me 07:21:08 Lisa: in the next version of the COGA guidance we're also linking to WCAG and other things 07:21:23 ack kevin 07:21:23 kevin, you wanted to talk about document environment and to respond on priority targets 07:21:53 We already have a relationships section: https://www.w3.org/TR/web-sustainability-guidelines/#relationships 07:21:56 q+ 07:22:01 kevin: who do we target first, browser vendors or consumers? we found in AGWG over the years is to find high value targerts 07:22:03 ack li 07:22:11 s/targrts/targets 07:22:23 kevin: a lot of WCAG targets content creators. We can't reach them all 07:22:25 mike_beganyi has joined #ag 07:23:01 kevin: it's easy to create content for the web, what we're asking them to do is not necessarily easier. If you have high value targets, eg browser vendors, that gives a bit shift 07:24:06 kevin: another point… if I'm training people, one of the first things I say is don't read WCAG… it's a standard. In addition there's an ecosystem of resources, that explain not just WCAG but accessibility in general, it gives people an easy on-ramp to accessibility 07:24:29 kevin: WCAG's primary target is evaluators, auditors. So where does the rec track document sit? 07:24:41 kevin: it's not the 200 reqs, it's the handholding 07:25:03 kevin: people have been switched off before because it is a complex document 07:25:22 q+ 07:25:33 kevin: it is technically challenging though 07:25:43 scribe+ 07:25:44 q- 07:26:10 hdv: RE content ecosystem, that is great about WCAG, it is technically challenging. we talked about that this morning as well with the group that was there 07:26:18 Siri has joined #ag 07:26:20 ... I think official guidance around sustainability that provides an on-ramp is a great idea 07:26:29 https://www.w3.org/TR/web-sustainability-guidelines/#relationships 07:26:31 ... RE linking, we've sometimes removed some requirements from WSG because they're already in WCAG 07:26:43 ... don't want multiple standards saying the same thing, I like cross-linking more 07:26:46 +1 hdv 07:26:48 +1 to requirements being in one place and linked 07:26:56 ... put things in the one standard they belong the most in 07:26:59 ack hdv 07:26:59 hdv, you wanted to comment on crossref 07:27:02 scribe- 07:27:29 Specification documents cover 2 different purposes: it stands as structured knowledge database + it serves as reference for assessment. Those are different levels and use cases 07:28:20 JenStrickland: I'm hearing a lot do this, do that, without checking if we did already. 07:28:42 I dont know the current status of all of them but some wsg things are already ✂️ because they overlapped, there is so much room for growth! 07:28:50 mutual collaboration etc. 07:28:57 JenStrickland: we have already covered a lot of what is suggested to us 07:29:06 ack me 07:29:34 q- I wanted to talk for 30-40 seconds about how much overlap I see. Professional culture of raising up teams 07:30:19 q+ I wanted to talk for 30-40 seconds about how much overlap I see. Professional culture of raising up teams 07:30:31 tzviya: this is probably not the last time we meet with AGWG 07:30:58 individual vs cumulative impact 07:31:06 tzviya: re Jen's point on lense change… individual vs many. It's important to talk about how we can collaborate 07:31:14 q? 07:31:16 q+ morganm to talk briefly about overlap 07:31:30 tzviya: it would be good to talk about how we can improve our documents from regulatory perspective 07:32:09 q+ to highlight that we are here to share what we have learned over the years 07:32:14 ack morganm 07:32:14 morganm, you wanted to talk briefly about overlap 07:33:03 morganm: I'm very excited about accessibility and sustainability, there's a huge overlap between people. Want to emphasise that the work on improving the overlap isn't a big deal, I've already seen it happen from people on this call 07:33:17 ack kevin 07:33:17 kevin, you wanted to highlight that we are here to share what we have learned over the years 07:34:00 kevin: we're here to share learnings from WCAG over the years. In hindsight we would have probably done things differently 07:34:44 q+ 07:34:44 q+ 07:34:52 tzviya: in our group we talked about where we're heading with metrics, measurability. Do we want to hear more about assertions and how they may be useful? 07:35:13 fershad_: yes, about the balance between some things you can actually test and things you can't test 07:35:41 chrisp has joined #AG 07:36:13 Rachael: one of the challenges of writing guidelines for adoption is that everything has to be really testable, so we have process we _know_ improve accessibility, with anecdotal evidence. User testing, plain language reviews using style guides etc. A lot of things we know can work and we want to give credits to 07:36:35 q+ 07:37:42 Rachael: but they aren't repeatable. So we are trusting people when they make an assertion, we're requiring they make a public claim, but the documentation or proof is up to them whether to share it or not, not required to make public. We realise that makes it easy for potential gaming, there's risk. 07:38:01 q+ to support looking at assertions 07:38:23 fershad_: we can park it for now, but I feel this is definitely something we can explore at a later stage 07:38:37 kevin: this is about giving credit for things we know are beneficial 07:38:55 ack wendyreid 07:38:57 kevin: there are a lot of things that are good to do, but they don't fit in a conformance model that is testable 07:39:55 wendyreid: someone asked about the conformance model to ask what was in foundational and what was in the rest… what I would like to happen in WCAG is the concept of 'prerequisites', a checklist of things when you have them, you are ready to start testing the requirement. 07:40:25 +1 wendyreid 07:40:32 +1 wendyreid 07:40:51 fershad_: we heard from feedback is people want to know 'what are the most impactful things we can do now?' 07:40:51 q+ to say tagging 07:40:53 In my day job, a common phrase of mine is "Ready to test"(™) 07:41:00 +1 Ben_Till1 07:41:08 ack JenStrickland 07:41:12 zakim, please close the queue 07:41:12 ok, kevin, the speaker queue is closed 07:41:12 zakim, close the queue 07:41:13 ok, wendyreid, the speaker queue is closed 07:41:18 zakim, close the queue 07:41:18 ok, tzviya, the speaker queue is closed 07:41:19 fershad_: there is something to say for ordering prioritisation 07:41:55 ack me 07:42:00 ack AlexDawson 07:42:08 JenStrickland: something about the history of assertions that could be valuable for WSG. I'll bring that to the next WSG meeting 07:42:46 AlexDawson: re assertions I am afraid this transparancy leads to greenwashing. If we don't want people to claim things they claim that they aren't doing 07:42:57 AlexDawson: we already have an issue with that today 07:43:32 scribe+ 07:43:55 hdv: I guess assertions have potential to lead to greenwashing, I imagine this would also be a risk for accessibility, people can claim whatever they want 07:44:09 ... I think our job would be to define assertions that are so cleverly formulated that it's hard to maneuver around it 07:44:25 ... I do think it's helpful; there are things that are hard to measure or to fit into a conformance model 07:44:36 q? 07:44:40 ack hdv 07:44:40 hdv, you wanted to support looking at assertions 07:44:43 ack next 07:44:44 scribe- 07:44:45 Rachael, you wanted to say tagging 07:45:05 Rachael: for us, for assertions, we are still requiring certain requirements to be done in additions to the assertion 07:45:46 Assertions originally started as a different thing. A part of it was a "showing your work" that you did the thing you claim to have done in testing. The W3C group would not develop the "assertion" or "protocol." Rather, the entity would document how it did the testing that could often be more accessible than even meeting WCAG. So, it doesn't have 07:45:46 to lead to greenwashing for SWING/WSG. 07:45:56 Rachael: I wanted to call out tagging. We tag by POUR traditionally, but can also tag by Functional Need, User Need, etc. This helps represent the same requirements in different forms 07:46:31 rrsagent, make logs 07:46:31 I'm logging. I don't understand 'make logs', tzviya. Try /msg RRSAgent help 07:46:42 rrsagent, make minutes 07:46:43 I have made the request to generate https://www.w3.org/2025/11/13-ag-minutes.html tzviya 07:47:04 please feel free to reach out about content useable or the research module 07:47:13 matt: sounds good, look forward to it 07:47:16 Janina: +1 07:47:34 kazuhito has left #ag 07:59:23 morganm has left #ag 09:33:13 shiestyle has joined #ag 10:26:50 shiestyle has joined #ag 11:03:27 shiestyle has joined #ag 11:39:53 shiestyle has joined #ag 12:04:44 shiestyle has joined #ag 12:21:01 shiestyle has joined #ag 12:30:37 kirkwood has joined #ag 13:07:04 shiestyle has joined #ag 13:27:17 shiestyle has joined #ag 14:01:31 shiestyle has joined #ag 14:50:23 shiestyle has joined #ag 15:48:07 shiestyle has joined #ag 16:22:25 shiestyle has joined #ag 16:54:12 shiestyle has joined #ag 17:44:27 shiestyle has joined #ag 18:33:57 shiestyle has joined #ag 18:53:43 shiestyle has joined #ag 19:08:55 shiestyle has joined #ag 19:33:47 shiestyle has joined #ag 20:05:41 shiestyle has joined #ag 21:06:51 shiestyle has joined #ag 21:16:00 shiestyle has joined #ag 23:08:38 shiestyle has joined #ag 23:20:54 shiestyle has joined #ag 23:59:48 jamesn has joined #ag 23:59:54 spectranaut_ has joined #ag