SH: I am Sarah Horton and I am an instructional technology specialist at Dartmouth College. I have written one and co-written another books, "WEB STYLE GUIDE, Basic Design Principles for Creating Web Sites", & "Web Teaching Guide". Through that came to be involved in Web Access issues.
JB: Everybody introduce himself or herself please! Introductions proceeded.
CV: The new web access law in Germany does not mention compliance level for the WAI guidelines. Also a requirement for private companies to comply has been withdrawn.
JB: The lack of level may be positive, in the sense that it opens up the possibility of more than the minimum being required as in the U.S.
Several issues on the agenda; Benefits of Web Accessibility document, Implementation Plan for Web Accessibility, feedback on the way we list translations. Feedback from Libby on the tone of the Implementation Plan was that use of you and your was not consistent with other documents published by WAI. What do people think?
Responders like the document.
JB: We'll address the credibility by tightening up the document references.
SH: I was surprised by the tone. Who was this pitched to? Could we spell out what the differences are between this document and others we have published? I'll send some ideas to the list about how to express the differences.
JB: I don't hear any desire to change the document. The alternative if we went back to the original plan was to sound objective. We can follow through statement by statement to add credibility.
HS: I like the document a lot.
JB: Change Web services to Internet services? Also from Libby drop the references to different environments. The additional details made the document less readable. The differences between categories were confusing in regard to large and small organizations and different types. The collapsing didn't work well.
SH: Why do you have to use categories? The categories may be giving you the trouble since the web sites may reflect different plans and environments.
JB: Let's wait until the change log is done and then put the document out for review.
CV: I am not sure it is ready for review.
HB: This could have many pointers to a lot of documents.
HBj: Do we have necessary information to point to?
JB: The pointing is problematic because of the fact some documents are always going to be in process and the need for a good pace can produce some documents before the references are available.
HBj: Let's see what the comments in review say.
JB: Helle could you send in your comments Monday or Tuesday?
HBj: I have a question about the document, web design people here want to be certified for their company and show they can deliver a product that complies with W3C guidelines.
JB: Let's hold that discussion for a future meeting on evaluation documents. I want also today to bring up meeting planning.
I also had a problem with the starting page display. The page displays code for some browser settings.
HBj, and SH, both get code.
JB: I will flip the language code to see what happens. Also right now there are two languages at the top of the document, English, and Danish. Daniel doesn't like that approach, and prefers we just use a link to a translation page.
SH: It was confusing to have the translation handled in two different ways on various documents.
HBj: Maybe we could have menu pull down of translations.
SH: That isn't good accessibility the pull downs.
CV: It works for just a few forms. I agree with Daniel the default page gets you what you want.
JB: I propose to run a link to a page, which lists the translations for this document. This could be less of an administrative burden to update.
HBj: We need to use the two-letter language code to indicate what language. Don't use the country code.
HB: Original html tag could be specific to dialect.
JB: The getting started page we consider done.
JB Now about meeting times? Two meetings are close together. CSUN has a conference which WAI holds a meeting immediately before. Do we want to meet on Sunday March 24th, immediately after the Saturday meeting? The other meeting is held Thursday and Friday February 28th, and March 1st. The problem is we would have two face-to-face meetings in a three-week period. One meeting will happen in France and one in the U.S. Is this ok with people?
HBj: I think it is a good idea because some people could attend one or the other, depending upon their location in the world.
JB: Anyone opposed. (No dissent) Who can go to Nice?
HBj: Yes
CV: I don't know. I can't tell until early next year.
SD: Yes.
HS: I don't know we have a closing day of another project then.
JB: Would Palm Sunday be a problem for anyone? (No) Anyone have a problem with Nice? Nice has the advantage of offering a fairly intense meeting for one or two days. We could have joint meeting group. A fish bowl meeting, a meeting of super set of best practices, pull together metadata internationalization are potential meeting ideas. We have Thursday and Friday to work with. Thursday we could start with a joint meeting in the morning? Thursday afternoon some focus on best practices? Friday Web Accessibility? Sound too choppy? Some joint meeting candidates would be on international European information exchanges, and quality assurance. We don't want to meet on Monday also, long week, may leave people feeling cranky.
HBj: how many people could phone in? Harvey could you join in?
HB: I found it very effective to participate on phone because I had my computer there to use.
JB: The audio in that meeting worked well?
HB: Yes. We got some really good input at the CSUN meeting.
SH: We could have a best practice on spreading the word about Accessibility. Anyone been through a successful redesign or failure? I like case studies. A scenario or two and how people went through the process.
JB: We have done that. We would try to recreate that on Friday. On Thursday we would have Joint meeting emphasis, or best practices, and Friday European exchanges. No opposition? I will explore setting that up. With regard to the Los Angeles meeting, Helle suggests a WCAG and EOWG meeting.
HB: The WCAG needs to go over where we are going. So we can understand how the educational tools are being updated. Will they be far enough along?
JB: I don't believe they have a solid schedule for that may feel the need for time for them. I can ask at the joint meeting. We could get in on a Saturday interest group early afternoon or late afternoon. We won't be meeting next week. The next meeting is November 30th.
HBj: I will be in Birmingham UK.
JB: Thanks for meeting today.
Last revised 30 November, 2001 by Judy Brewer