– DRAFT –
RQTF meeting

Accessibility of Machine Learning and Generative AI draft.

janina: no recent progress.

<Joshue108> Is there a URI to the latest draft?

janina: There has been so good input from the group (present in the minutes) and some other ideas that may influence other W3C work.

janina: There's quite a bit to say but I just haven't been able to scribe it into the document.

Joshue108: I'm happy to help out on this because it feels like something that is very timely and somewhere we could make a huge difference.

Game accessibility.

/ Game Accessibility User Requirements

JP: We are creating gaming user requirements. RNIB are looking at developing these.

We are told we cannot have standards in gaming. There is intentional and unintentional friction.

We are developing a gap analysis

Are there standards that fit the brief already? There are some that could be applicable.

Doesn't seem clear - at least not distinguisable between these concerns

JP: Haven't made much progress but have been working on gap analysis on Github

JS: Do you have the links from Matthew in APA?

JP: Not yet

JS: Will ping

JP: Matthew was wondering if we need a new user requirements doc, or if there is something that fits the bill

<Zakim> Joshue, you wanted to ask if JP has looked at these

http://gameaccessibilityguidelines.com

SH: We've been talking about a11y standards stand point - we look at ring fencing the game, and what is possible. We've looked at Ablegamers etc

JOC: Have you checked out the links in XAUR etc?

JP: Yes we have

JP: There are lots of existing docs and the EN 301 549

JP: There is this and others

JW: There is another challenge

DIstunguishing between desirable and undesirable difficulties - in the context of education, there are some differences between real environment tasks etc - what are the core things as a part of the exercise in these settings.

Maybe be less clear in gaming

Gives us more room

Not a learning process - some challenges are inherent

A game designer may say some difficulties are essential

Any insights John?

JP: Some things should be ringfenced but there may be claims that something is just a 'part of the game' - honesty is needed

This needs to be determined by the game designer

This argument could not be used in context of subtitles etc

JW: There is another problem

If I'm designing a game - what are the essential charactheristics that give the same game as what I have in mind. Can be defined differently - this may include or exclude people with varying abilities

There are maybe no fixed criteria

We have latitude on certain things

This is a conceptual problem - how do we define that the essential aspects are?

JP: Do you mean difficulty in identifying the challenge at the centre?

JS: I agree there is latitude - but as an abstract principle - in real terms, I don't know how practical that is.

How many are thought of like this?

SH: I see this as when there are remakes of old games - the core game is often the same but may have more a11y features

Designers and devs have a lot of control on how things are presented

They can then ask 'What do they need to do to provide a11y support?'

JW: It seems to be the same problem - with new variants of existing games.

If they are not thinking of it the first time around, they likely are not on the second. They could define the challenges differently

There are not the same external criteria

JW: Not sure how you go about solving this.

JW: If people had different abilities that could help frame this discussion

JS: I can agree in theory but can't think of new things popping up

Joshue108: Jason has a good point, and we should consider it

JS: We should define the kind of things that become desirable friction - like a clock, how well can you see, could become a game issue

Fitting pieces together etc.

We could make a list of common themes like these

<Joshue108> +1 to Janina

JW: Agree with that also

JW: Some may say for a11y purposes that a time limit is a essential but the puzzle needs to be solved.

jasonjgw: consider a game like scrabble but add a clock, is the clock essential

JPaton: One could argue time limits aren't essential, but we should let developers define what they think are essential frictions

JPaton: JPaton: Peerhaps designer should declare?

JPaton: If seeing how jigsaw pieces fit is essential, it may be a game a blind person can't play.

JS: The example if not a new one

These are just social conventions

A game can take as long as it takes

SH: Are there two different parts? What gaming elements have different impacts on groups?

Some things may have an impact on someones disability

scott: Perhaps we inventory those

There may be captions and other features etc

SH: We were talking about maps in 3Ds envs a la XAUR etc

The GAUR will expose what these pieces are.

Could help across W3C to have impact

We dont want to change the challenge of the task

<Zakim> Joshue, you wanted to say this is all predicated on their being a fair level playing field

https://github.com/w3c/rqtf/blob/JWJPaton-patch-1/Gaming_GAP_analysis.md

JOC: I like the idea of defining the desired level of challenge vs the need to support multi modal access - interesting engineering question

JP: This would help withe structure of the GAUR. And how to identify what frictions are essential

JS: This will be an interesting list

JW: Have you enough to work on John?

JP: Think so