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Scribe/Encoder: Gregory J. Rosmaita
Comments to:
Judy Brewer, <jbrewer@w3.org>
Last updated: November 12, 1999
JB: I'd like to start, as usual, with an agenda review:
JB: does anyone have any topics to add?
// NO
JB: who's been doing something that they'd like to share?
JT: I'm conducting a brown bag lunch about web accessibility at John Hancock next week -- hoping to use online curriculum
JB: some parts are still a bit messy -- check again on Monday
JT: ok
JB: are you talking about the WCAG curriculum or the overview of WAI?
JT: probably the overview
JB: well, that's an incentive for me to tweak a few parts of that
// ACTION JB: finish tweaking overview curriculum
JB: anyone else with outreach updates?
HJ: announced meeting with Judy and Danish Libraries Associations in November; hope there will be around 40 to 50 people, which is a good crowd for Denmark, there is also a big conference the next day at which both Judy and Hakon Lie will present; in the first 2 days after the meeting announcement was circulated, over 40 people signed up
JB: WAI staff submitted 3 different proposals for CSUN 20000; Daniel, Charles?
CMN: my topic was accessible multimedia
DD: mine will cover XML accessibility; Charles is covering SVG and SMIL access; not sure about the content of the third--is that yours, Judy?
JB: yes--it is a combination of how to use instructional support resources on GLs and looking at different implementation strategies and why some were effective and some not
DD: done 2 interviews recently for French magazines -- mostly W3C stuff, but worked WAI into it
JB: David Clark and I presented at ATA conference in Orlando last week; did another one the next day at ATIA; first one a 3 hour session that was great--usually do only 1 hour--3 hours let us get into a lot more detail and work more with audience; Dave walked through WCAG and curriculum; 40 people there; sophisticated questions; not people who were new to accessibility; a lot of concern with CSS implementation by UAs and accessibility; ATIA presentation had a larger crowd and was much more general; tried to network with AT developers to speak about UA and DOM activities; David Poehlman and I are doing a presentation at NASA Space Flight Center next week; any other announcements?
// NO
Scribe's Note: The WAI Web Accessibility Policies Page can be found at:
<http://www.w3.org/WAI/References/Policy>
JB: updated some links on policy page; noted that for some reason the type of stuff we link to there is particularly unstable; surprised that even some agencies have shifted addresses; Hela the stuff that the Danish ministry is doing, there is no URL on that, is there?
HJ: came 2 days ago--will send next week; been very busy and ill and the network went down; just saw it myself today-- will try to translate index and some headings before I send it off to you
JB: be happy to point to it even if not in Danish; anyone looking at it in Denmark certainly won't mind that it is in Danish!
HJ: will send it to you right now, then--should I post it to the list?
JB: anyone willing to spend a few hours on the policy page; the format that is there is something that a lot of people have said is useful as it gives formal jurisdiction, pointers to legislation; problem is that a lot of places don't post info on the web; anyone want to do some poking around?
SS: I can spend a couple of hours on it;
JB: let's talk briefly some time today--it's straightforward, but takes time to do
SS: where is latest version?
JB: <http://www.w3.org/WAI/References/Policy> -- it has a 14 October revision date; indicated on page in a few places where URIs have changed; LAWLink changed indexing so can't find New South Wales legislation; that is an important resource that we need to find
// ACTION Sheila S. -- update Policy page
DD: stuff that Dominique sent out is from the French government which talk about what public sites should b e doing in France; specifically mentions W3C, WAI, and accessibility
JB: what types of sites does this apply to?
DD: haven't read it through, but for all public sites
JB: government sites?
DD: yes, but not exclusively; publicly funded organizations is best that I can guess right now;
JB: can't find part that deals with accessibility
DD: search for "access"; where says "nouveaux" click there
JB: Sheila, what I've done is when I find a law or GL that deals with internet will try to find any mention of accessibility, so can include a pointer to that section; if a reporter is trying to find an angle on accessibility, they will spend about 1 minute searching, so want to point them to specifics; would do top level anchor in French circular, and then point to link cited by DD
SS: for my assignment, do I just need to test all existing links and try to track down info behind broken links, or do you want me to start over from scratch
JB: I cleaned up a lot of them; there are others that are broken that I haven't flagged, but I have updated about a dozen links over the past few days; will be adding French and Danish stuff--will send you a note
HJ: sent you some links to Danish sites where there are references and resources pertaining to Danish policies but I don't see them listed; sent it to the EO list quite a while ago
JB: I'll build those into the policy page; apologize for not having done so earlier--it is an overwhelming task; anything else on policy page?
Scribe's Note: The WAI Events Calendar can be found at:
<http://www.w3.org/WAI/References/Events>
JB: Jim Allen and Kitch Barnicle maintainers; should check with KB to see if still wants to be part of maintaining it now she is at TRACE; want to take a look at what is there and find what, if any categories are missing from this; August is what is showing now -- should start with October; Internet World, ATIA, Telecomm99, CTG, etc. -- does anyone know of any web accessibility presentations at CTG or EduCause? EduCause important because of distance learning -- which reminds me that I need to add policy link to California policies on distance learning
GJR: Jay Leventhal and Crista Earl of AFB will be revising the presentation on HPR and PWWebSpeak that they did for AccessWorld and for ATIA
JB: GJR, could you send Jay and Crista's contact info to me; will send them QuickTips and other resources; mention offer to them; or email them and CC me with offer; if you can open dialog, I'd appreciate it
GJR: OK
// ATION GJR: send contact info for Jay & Crista to Judy
JB: what is AccessWorld, by the way
GJR: AccessWorld is a new publication from AFB press dedicated to access technology, with articles ranging from the technical to the general; I've spoken with Jay and Crista about getting as much information about every aspect of web accessibility into AccessWorld as possible, including general articles, FAQs, conformance reviews/product evals based on WAI GLs, Last Call notices, publicity of new Notes, etc; Jay and Crista are working the conference circuit rather heavily this month; but we agreed to resume our dialog about AccessWorld in November
JB: sounds great, could you keep us posted?
GJR: yes, and there is
more
information available about AccessWorld at:
<http://www.hicom.net/~oedipus/vicug/access_world.html>
DD: is the events update alias still functional?
JB: yes -- <wai-events@w3.org> is the address to use to submit events to be posted on the page; NetExpo (Washington, DC) anyone know of events? no--maybe if post list of November events to list, can get feedback/info on whether accessibility being discussed; I see the Ericsson (sp?) workshop listed -- are you doing a presentation on there DD?
DD: no, but W3C presentation will mention WAI
JB: conference on aging; Inet World in Japan in December-- think Max is doing something there; nothing listed for January 2000, which I find hard to believe -- anyone interested in looking around for listings -- spend an hour or 2 looking
// NO VOLUNTEERS
JB: WL been requesting that EO look into this for quite some time; will be mainly worked out by AU WG; any thoughts on what the top 10 questions might be?
CMN: top 3 are all which tool can I use? and those I will cover with some simple verbiage and with a link or links to AU's List of Existing Tools page, which you can get to from the AU home page
JB: what are 4 through 10?
HB: I get questions like "how can I do layers if I use DreamWeaver"?
JB: what does that mean?
HB: I'm not sure myself, but that is what I'm often asked
CMN: answer is "don't use it if you want to create an accessible page using a WYSIWYG tool"
HB: that's what I said; questions usually are how do I use tool x to do accessible pages?
JB: are ASP pages accessible?
GJR: it all depends upon how well versed the author of the page is with accessibility issues, and how much he or she cares about accessibility and interoperability; the presence of the proprietary extension, though, such as cfm and asp, as recent threads on the WAI-IG list illustrate, cause a lot of confusion -- if an individual goes to a site or loads a page whose URI ends with .cfm or .asp and that page doesn't work with his or her AT, then he or she is likely to blame the generating software, when the problem is most likely related to poor authoring practices; basically, Cold Fusion (the ML that uses the .cfm extension) and Active Server Pages (which uses the .asp extension) are proprietary languages/formats which allow a site maintainer to create pages that are generated from a database, thereby allowing the page to be personalized and tailored to an individual user -- they allow the insertion of tailored content into a generic template, in order to deliver dynamically built web pages on the fly; to the end user, the page that the end user interacts with is indistinguishable from any other hypertext page, and if you check the source of a page which is delivered to you with a .cfm extension via a browser, it will appear to be straight HTML; the accessibility issues which stem from the use of Cold Fusion or ASP are the same as with any other type of web content -- are there textual equivalents defined for graphics? is the page well structured? does the page use stylesheets or physical markup? are scripts and applets being run, and if so, are they being used as WCAG outlines? if frames are being used, is there an informative NOFRAMES section defined? etc., so I suppose the question to be answered is: can dynamic HTML generation programs such as Cold Fusion or ASP, which create pages with an extension other than .htm or .html, be used to create accessible pages? and the answer, as CMN pointed out on the WAI-IG list yesterday, is a resounding yes; the US Mint, by the way, as well as CAST use Cold Fusion
// WL joins
JB: what is way of asking a question in a simple way so as to explain how Cold Fusion and ASP tools can conform to ATAG?
GJR: is it a problem if I use an authoring tool to create pages with a an extension other than .htm or .html?
JB: what other questions; which tools comply?
SS: can add extra HTML code to some tools; they don't prompt you to add extra HTML, but allow you to add HTML code, such as table summary info, etc. -- need to know syntax and have to go back into source and add by hand; question might be do I need to know HTML if I use an authoring tool? answer is yes in my opinion
CMN: answer, sadly, currently is yes,
WL: can I prepare pages for the web using "Save for Web..."
SS: some tools strip off extra tags
JB: question of how much HTML do I need to know to make pages accessible
WL: as of tomorrow, if tool is conformant, will not strip out unknown markup
GJR: does the ATAG cover programs such as Word, Excel, and WP that allow me to save as HTML or publish directly to the web or my company's intranet?
JB: good; most people assume they only address WYSIWYG tools
HB: problems in WordPerfect and Office products and Lotus Notes products; can send right off to Domino server and publish without thinking
JB: Lotus working with AUWG to try to fix that; should the FAQ address basic misunderstandings? what are differences between ATAG and WCAG?
WL: ATAG covers tools other than text editors; WCAG reads as if it presumes that authors are using text editors and know HTML
JB: questions generated so far:
SS: what is being done by AUWG to influence manufacturers? is anything being done other than getting out ATAG?
JB: another question: who has committed to making tools accessible; who from industry has participated? Charles--do you have any thoughts that you want addressed?
CMN: no -- want to keep it really simple
WL: must I use a tool to create accessible web pages?
HB: what is an authoring tool?
WL: is there a difference between an authoring tool and a tool for authoring?
HB: can an authoring tool that meets the ATAG make the creation of accessible content fully automated?
WL: if Triple-A, it can; I guess another question is "can I exercise control over the tool, or do I need to adjust to it"? do I have a choice -- can I create a page and then check for accessibility problems or can I have the tool check as I go?
JB: that's a separate question--can I turn off prompting if I want to?
WL: is this thing going to bug me? is this tool going to nag me? is it going to allow me to create interesting pages?
JB: can I turn off the prompting
GJR: will I be forced to implement all of the accessibility strategies outlined in WCAG or can I be selective and configure it? we need to make sure that we stress that accessibility can't be fully automated, that some accessibility enhancements need user input (for labeling of graphics, etc.) -- need to stress that simply running a crappy page through the tool will not result in a Triple-A compliant page!
JB: good point--and one that we can't stress enough
JB: sent EO list a copy of Sylvie Duchateau's review group strategy outline; already have a few comments and misunderstandings about endeavor; general idea is that this group has talked a few times about getting review groups going and getting a gallery of sites together; been some exploratory discussions, but nothing yet built in stone; last planning call canceled; need for an email discussion list; sent suggestion out last night on how mailing list might be set up; would be interested in getting a bit of reaction on that now--will be talking with Sylvie and Dominique next week--DD, could you join me on that call?
WL: what meeting is this a summary of?
JB: second informal planning meeting on how to get review groups started -- first one WAI staff and Sylvie and Dominique who offered to be owners of this activity; second included a few individuals who were invited to join third was to be more widely publicized; who's seen discussion Cced to EO
WL: looking at It now
HB: haven't had time to read them
SS: seen them briefly
WL: I noticed that you (JB) proposed they use EO mailing list--I vote double for that!
GJR: reviewed it last night; still think we need 2 tracks -- a public discussion, and a more private space in which to work out what form the reviews will take; I think that using the EO list is a good idea, but to encourage networking and to spur growth of individual review groups, I think that a web-review list needs to be set up at w3.org as soon as possible
DD: seen it; Dominique proposing a call next week on Thursday
JB: can't do it then; will look at my calendar and get back to him
HJ: are we going to have another phone bridge conference on this?
JB: need to; ran into conflicts with last scheduled call due to travel for 5 to 6 weeks; couldn't add new things to my agenda
HJ: was on last meeting, had the feeling that some misunderstanding between participants on what the next steps are and what groups should be involved; think is good idea to keep discussion on EO list
JB: agree about misunderstandings; at begining of effort is possible to send people in very different directions based on misunderstandings; need a more solid foundation
// HJ leaves
JB: Jonathan Chetwynd had weighed in with strong opposition as to having any discussions private; want to get feedback of others
WL: privacy has to do with keeping discussion of specific sites out of papers
JB: not just question of what output of review is, but development of review comments; people who are new at this may mis-diagnose a site; sometimes takes thinking out loud to come up with accurate review; would like to have space where people learning review techniques can think out loud; there are also some sites which we've been asked to review which are in beta others that are confidential or private; info that can't be shared in public forum, but which needs privacy and discretion
WL: I understand the need for secrecy in those instances, but think that more general planning should be conducted in the open on the EO list
SS: at which time will discussions become public?
JB: needs to be figured out -- once review team has agreed what final comment on sites should be, should that be made public?
WL: vote for never be public
JT: could be worked out with webmaster that submits review; depends on their preferences; some people will want to blow their own trumpet to let world know their pages are accessible
WL: do we want to be Consumer Reports? we review in a public space, but the product being reviewed can't cite our review? or do we want to have sites publicize the effort?
JB: think we do want people to brag, and are thinking of helping them brag with the gallery
WL: that's different
JB: some reviews will feed into gallery
DD: should be pushing for public info, except in cases where is impossible; don't want to be so secretive about the process; can work on review in private, but need to publicize results
JB: should review be public or review and process?
DD: review has to be public
JB: outcome?
DD: yes, outcome, but not necessarily the process--can't comment publicly until review finished
SS: purpose of review process?
JB: well, contributing to the gallery is only one aspect, WAI is getting tons of requests for feedback on specific sites--what to develop capacity to generate answers; could spin out to fee-for-service work, but that path isn't clear
SS: if do decide to publicize outcome, could point out problems with site as well as how they can easily be fixed; review could then be a learning experience, rather than just a criticism
GJR: will maintainer have opportunity to review the site review before it becomes public? AFB does a lot of product evaluation, and the last step in the process is submitting the final review to the developer/manufacturer for feedback -- unless there are glaring errors, the article will be published unchanged, but if the developer/manufacturer has a strong opinion on an aspect of the review, that opinion is included in the published report/findings
JB: what is the timespan given for feedback from maintainer?
GJR: 2 to 3 weeks, I believe--will try to get policy statement or procedure outline from Jay Leventhal or Crista Earl
// ACTION GJR: get any and all information about AFB's Technology Review procedures, especially anything pertaining to developer feedback on product evaluations by AFB's National Technology Program
WL: do we need permission from the developers of a site to review it? doesn't the fact that they've placed content on the web make their sites fair game?
JB: need to think hard about this; the French team, for example, is considering analysis of top 20 sties in France; the WAI receives tons of review requests every week, so we don't necessarily need to go looking too hard; each review group will have different methodology; either Sylvie or Dominique will join next EO call--they will be main drivers and coordinators of the effort, but I want it its development to occur under the EO umbrella
WL: how is review of US federal sites as result of Department of Justice (DOJ) mandate that they be made accessible going?
JB: asked someone from GSA, who gave me a "no comment"; will check with DOJ
WL: do they have a process?
JB: have a self-evaluation based loosely on WCAG -- people who have seen reviews can't comment on them yet; but the reviews are internal, and do not solicit the opinions of disability experts
// END OF AGENDA
JB: Next meeting in 2 weeks (29 October)
WL: can you publish reminder that meeting will be held at least a full day before the meeting is scheduled?
JB: will try to get reminders out earlier, but EO home page has meeting dates through December, and in EO signature block I mention next meeting
// End of Teleconference
