Accessibility Education and Outreach Working Group (EOWG) Charter

Introduction

Accessibility is a key aspect of W3C's commitment to a Web for All. W3C standards include accessibility guidelines and technical specifications. However, accessibility is not as widely known and understood as many areas of W3C work. Understanding and implementing W3C's accessibility standards is quite complex. The Accessibility Education and Outreach Working Group addresses these challenges and supports W3C's mission by:

• Promoting W3C standards and resources for accessibility: Maintaining and extending the broad recognition of W3C standards and resources for accessibility, to further strengthen the credibility, authority, and trust in W3C as the leading technical body for web accessibility.
• Supporting uniform uptake of W3C standards for accessibility: Contributing to harmonized adoption of W3C standards in national and international standardization efforts (e.g. US Section 508, European EN 301 549, etc.), to enable organizations to use W3C standards and supporting educational, technical, and evaluation resources across multiple international markets.
• Supporting implementation of W3C standards for accessibility: Assisting a broad audience (developers, designers, project managers, etc.), including W3C membership, in understanding and implementing W3C standards.
• Engaging the community around W3C standards and resources: Engaging a wide multi-stakeholder community (industry, experts, researchers, users, etc.), throughout the development of W3C standards and resources, to improve the quality, consensus, and acceptance.
• Demonstrating W3C leadership in building a better web: Reinforcing the leadership of W3C as the go-to standardization body for web standards, to support the mission of leading the web to its full potential and to promote the universality of the web.

EOWG resources have proven valuable to promoting understanding, implementing, and testing conformance to W3C accessibility standards. The community relies on authoritative support from EOWG resources, for example:

• Web Accessibility Tutorials
• Easy Checks - A First Review of Web Accessibility
• How to Meet WCAG: A customizable quick reference
• WCAG-EM Report Tool: Web Accessibility Evaluation Report Generator
• Web Accessibility Perspectives – Videos that Explore the Impact and Benefits for Everyone

This charter proposes continuing the Accessibility Education and Outreach Working Group to maintain continuity of established W3C Member engagement in successfully developing deliverables consistent with W3C Process definition of a Working Group.

For additional information, including analysis of group options, list of external funds, and answers to questions that come up during charter review, see EOWG Charter 2020 Additional Information.

Deliverables

EOWG primarily develops "WAI Resources" that are stable, vetted pages on the WAI website. EOWG may publish W3C Working Group Notes during this charter period. The Working Group will contribute to and deliver the following resources:

Curricula on Web Accessibility

The curricula provide a framework for building courses, as well as comparing and procuring courses. They provide learning outcomes, teaching ideas, ideas to assess knowledge, and teaching resources. Background is in the Curricula Project Page. The first curriculum, Introduction to Web Accessibility, was used as the basis for a free online course.

• Add supporting information to the overview page Curricula on Web Accessibility (as started in Supporting Materials Requirement Analysis)
• Update Introduction to Web Accessibility based on further input
• Completed curriculum for developers – in-progress draft Curriculum: Developing Accessible Content
• Develop curriculum for designers, content authors, managers, and tester, as listed in the Future Outline section.

Accessibility Roles and Responsibilities Mapping (ARRM)

ARRM guides project managers and others to know which roles (e.g., front-end developer, visual designer, content author) are responsible for which aspects of accessibility. (It is a much more robust and vetted version of this Accessibility Responsibility Breakdown.) Background is in the ARRM Project page. The following are links are to in-progress drafts.

• Refine, review, and publish Role definitions
• Refine, review, and publish Role-Based Decision Tree
• Develop, refine, review, and publish mappings for UX Designer Responsibilities, Visual Designer Responsibilities, Content Author Responsibilities, and Front-End Developer Responsibilities

Easy Checks - A First Review of Web Accessibility

Easy Checks provides simple steps to help assess if a web page addresses accessibility. Information on the next iteration is in the Easy Checks Next Generation definition/requirements. It includes:

• Update existing content
• Add new checks for WCAG 2.1 and 2.2 success criteria
• Redesign the resource with simple checks on first page(s) and harder checks on other page(s)
• Provide filtering functionality to improve usefulness and usability, and make the resource shorter for most users

Web Accessibility Laws and Policies Database

Web Accessibility Laws and Policies lists governmental policies related to web accessibility.

• Update existing listings after vetting
• Actively research additional listings

Before and After Demonstration (BAD)

Before and After Demonstration (BAD) is a multi-page resource that shows an inaccessible website and a retrofitted version of this same website. Each web page includes annotations and has an example evaluation report.

• Update BAD to address WCAG 2.1 success criteria, and WCAG 2.2 success criteria if resources are available
• Update BAD to be more modern design and coding

WCAG Support Materials

WCAG supporting technical materials include Techniques for WCAG 2.1, Understanding WCAG 2.1, and How to Meet WCAG: A customizable quick reference.... Work on these may also include supplemental guidance that goes beyond WCAG requirements. Background: Requirements Analysis: WCAG Support Materials Redesign.

• Update the user interface and visual design of WCAG support materials, in coordination with the Accessibility Guidelines Working Group (AG WG)

Authoring Tool Accessibility Support Resources

Authoring tools are software and services that “authors” (web developers, designers, writers, etc.) use to produce web content (static web pages, dynamic web applications, etc.) Some background for the work listed below is in: Requirements Analysis for ATAG Report Tool) and (Requirements Analysis for Authoring Tools List). The following are links are to in-progress drafts.

• Complete ATAG Report Tool (ART)
• Complete Authoring Tools Accessibility Functionality List and encourage submissions
• Develop material to help project teams select authoring tools to support accessibility, and to encourage authoring tool vendors to meet Authoring Tool Accessibility Guidelines (ATAG)

Accessibility Evaluation Support Resources

WAI has several resources to help evaluate web accessibility. Accessibility evaluation is also called “assessment”, “audit”, and “testing”.

• Develop next iteration of the WCAG-EM Report Tool - Website Accessibility Evaluation Report Generator (issues in GitHub)
• Update (or retire) evaluation resources such as Using Combined Expertise to Evaluate Web Accessibility

Video Resources

WAI video resources currently include the Video Introduction to Web Accessibility and W3C Standards, Evaluating Web Accessibility Overview videos (coming soon), and 10 Web Accessibility Perspectives videos that illustrate that accessibility is essential for some and useful for all (complication of Perspectives Videos). The following additional video series are introduced in the Video-Based Resources Project Page:

• Develop a series of videos that illustrate the intent of each WCAG guideline and success criteria
• Develop a series of videos that show people with disabilities using different assistive technologies and adaptive strategies, to supplement How People with Disabilities Use the Web
• Develop videos on using Before and After Demonstration (BAD) (after it is updated) for teaching and learning

Other

EOWG will update other EOWG resources to address the current state of the art and make improvements for usability and consistency; for example, improve the translate-ability of the Accessibility Statement Generator Tool.

EOWG will contribute to accessibility education and outreach related efforts throughout W3C, such as:

• Targeted messaging to different audiences
• What's New in WCAG 2.2 resource
• Material explaining the next generation of accessibility guidelines (code named “Silver”)
• Editing and publishing some of the videos from the Introduction to Web Accessibility course
• Accessibility issues and solutions with high-focus technologies (such as real-time communication (RTC)) and emerging technologies

If projects are defined and editor resources are available, EOWG may also develop:

• Additional training material
• Updates to the How People with Disabilities Use the Web multi-page resource
• Accessible Online Learning additions to EOWG Resources
• List of training courses based on the WAI Curricula on Web Accessibility
• Publishing-related information in coordination with Publishing@W3C — This will most likely be adding information to existing EOWG Resources — for example, adding publishing examples to the sub-pages of How People with Disabilities Use the Web, although it could be new resources

Coordination

For all relevant resources, this Working Group will seek horizontal review for accessibility, internationalization, performance, privacy, and security with the relevant Working Groups, Interest Groups, and TAG, as appropriate. The Working Group will engage collaboratively with the horizontal review groups throughout development of each relevant resource.

Coordination with the following Groups will be made, per the W3C Process Document:

Communication

Content discussions for this Working Group are conducted in public: the meeting minutes from teleconference and face-to-face meetings will be archived for public review, and technical discussions and issue tracking will be conducted in a manner that can be both read and written to by the general public. Working Drafts and Editors' Drafts will be developed in a public repository and will permit direct public contribution requests. The teleconferences are not open to public participation.

Information about the group (including details about deliverables, issues, actions, status, participants, and meetings) will be available from the Accessibility Education and Outreach Working Group home page.

This group primarily conducts its work through teleconferences, GitHub, and surveys; and occasionally uses wiki and the e-mail list w3c-wai-eo@w3.org (archive) for communication. The public is invited to review, discuss, and contribute to this work.

The group may use a Member-confidential mailing list for administrative purposes and, at the discretion of the Chairs and members of the group, for member-only discussions in special cases when a participant requests such a discussion.

Decision Policy

This group will seek to make decisions through consensus and due process, per the W3C Process Document (section 3.3). Typically, an editor or other participant makes an initial proposal, which is then refined in discussion with the group participants and other reviewers, and consensus emerges with little formal voting being required.

However, if a decision is necessary for timely progress and consensus is not achieved after careful consideration of the range of views presented, the Chairs may call for a group vote and record a decision along with any objections. To afford asynchronous decisions and organizational deliberation, any resolution (including publication decisions) taken in a face-to-face meeting or teleconference will be considered provisional. A call for consensus (CfC) will be issued for all resolutions (for example, via email and/or web-based survey). If no objections are raised by the end of the response period, the resolution will be considered to have consensus as a resolution of the Working Group. All decisions made by the group should be considered resolved unless and until new information becomes available or unless reopened at the discretion of the Chairs or the Director.

This charter is written in accordance with the W3C Process Document (Section 3.4, Votes) and includes no voting procedures beyond what the Process Document requires.

Patent Disclosures

The Working Group provides an opportunity to share perspectives on the topic addressed by this charter. W3C reminds Working Group participants of their obligation to comply with patent disclosure obligations as set out in Section 6 of the W3C Patent Policy. While the Working Group does not produce Recommendation-track documents, when Working Group participants review Recommendation-track specifications from other Working Groups, the patent disclosure obligations do apply. For more information about disclosure obligations for this group, please see the W3C Patent Policy Implementation.

Licensing

This Working Group will use the W3C Document License for some of its deliverables, and for deliverables that are intended to be modified, it will use a more clearly permissive Creative Commons license (CC-BY) or the W3C Software and Document License.

About this Charter

This charter has been created according to section 5.2 of the Process Document. In the event of a conflict between this document or the provisions of any charter and the W3C Process, the W3C Process shall take precedence.