Web Accessibility Initiative Evaluation and Repair Working Group Charter
(WAI-ER-WG)
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Mission statement
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Scope
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Duration
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Deliverables
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Dependencies of other groups on this group's
deliverables
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Dependencies of this group on other groups'
deliverables
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Intended degree of confidentiality
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Relation to other groups
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Milestones for work items &
deliverables
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Meeting mechanisms & schedules
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Communication mechanisms
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Voting mechanisms
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Level of involvement of Team
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W3C staff contact
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Estimate of time commitment a group member
would have to
make in order to participate.
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Participants.
1 Mission statement
This group will produce a WAI Evaluation and Repair "toolkit" that
will be offered to people who create and maintain web sites, and
people experiencing difficulties while using the Web. The toolkit
will contain stand-alone tools as well as modules that can be
incorporated into other web authoring tools.
2 Scope
The scope of work of this group is to gather, coordinate, and
further develop tools that can help evaluate and improve web pages and
sites.
It is also to ensure a level of consistency, quality, and fitness
of these tools in one toolkit deliverable.
It is further refined by the goals and the scope of
functionalities of the various Evaluation and Repair tools that will
be dealt with this group.
In the area of Evaluation, we will find tools that generate a
simple notification of missing resource, as well as tools
that generate more complex reports, for one page or a complete site.
In the area of Repair, tools can specialize in one area of
accessibility (like description of image or linearization of
2-dimensional layout, like table or frame based layout) or more
generic repair tools (like changing transitional HTML into strict + style).
Both fully automated and semi-automated (involving human judgement)
tools are in the scope of the ER WG. Services located at third party
sites to provide temporary repair via a filtering or transformation
facility are also included.
The definition of accessibility rating scale is
in the scope of the ER IG group, but the ER WG will provide
input on feasibility.
2.2 Criteria for success
The main criteria for success of ER-WG is the timely deliverance and
use of tools by their intended audience (the "use" part is a joint
responsibility of this group and the Education and Outreach group)
This criteria shall be measured by the ER-IG.
3 Duration of work items
In view of the constant stream of new technology whose accessibility
must
be evaluated, the expected duration of the ER-WG is two years, at which
time
the group should be re-chartered for the duration of WAI work.
4 Deliverables
- list of all available evaluation & repair tools, with assessment of their
function, info on programming, whether they reflect WAI page author
guidelines, etc.
- draft architecture of composite toolkit of E & R utilities, with list of
auxiliary utilities & plug-in modules
- toolkit
- utilities & plug-in modules
5 Dependencies of other groups on this
group
5.1. Groups which will use deliverables
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Any results we obtain with implications for authoring tools
or
user agents will be offered to the respective groups (WAI-AU
and WAI-UA).
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Evaluation tools will be available to the Education and
Outreach
Group (WAI-EO) to help that group's outreach efforts.
- The ER IG will have to take the
ER WG's deliverables and evaluate them, to complete its task.
5.2 Liaison Methods
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Documents and pointers to tools published on the groups web site.
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Meetings between chairs (WAI-CG) as needed.
- ER IG chair needs to sit on ER WG, and the reverse.
6 Dependencies of this group on other
groups
6.1 Groups whose work will be used
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WAI Evaluation and Repair Interest Group (WAI-ER-IG): we will look
to this
group for input in the area of tools coordination, evaluation
criteria, and overall production of empirical data.
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WAI Page Author Guidelines Working Group (WAI-GL). We will
use the author guidelines as a basis for discussion.
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WAI User Agent Guidelines and Authoring Tool Working Group (WAI-UA
and AU) to understand how the integration of tools with User
Agents and Authoring environment is best achieved.
6.2 Required time of delivery.
The Page Author Guidelines have made sufficient progress for this
group to begin working.
In addition, several tools already exist so we can expect a first
version of the toolkit to be available by the end of 1998.
7 Intended degree of Confidentiality
Group home page, proceedings, deliverables, and charter will all be public.
8 Relation to other groups
8.1 Relation to W3C Groups
This group is related to other W3C groups via the dependencies on
deliverables
described in sections 5 and 6 above.
In addition,
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This group is related to the people in W3C producing the
HTML and CSS validation service, and other various reporting
tools done by W3C staff.
8.2 Relation to External Groups
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We will solicit input and participation from the authors of the
existing Evaluation and Repair tools
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The ER WG will coordinate closely with
research institutions involved in E & R tools development, including the
Trace Research and Development Center at the University of Wisconsin,
Madison, USA.
9 Milestones for work items &
deliverables
The times at which the deliverables will be produced will depend on the
advance in various tools at the time we start working on them, and the
resources available to do the work.
A tentative agenda is:
- July 98 - resource listing of all available repair
& evaluation tools, plus assessment of their
function, & info on their programming base, & whether
they are updated to WAI page author guidelines draft, etc.
- August 98 - draft outline of features, functions, and
architecture of primary toolkit, plus planned
auxiliary utilities, plug-in modules, etc.
- October 98 - Betas of a several modules (captioning,
author prompting)
- November 98 - Betas of more modules
- December 98 - Beta of toolkit
- January 99 - First working draft of toolkit
10. Meeting mechanisms & schedules
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primary meeting mechanism:
w3c-wai-er-wg list
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bi-weekly meeting: by phone
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quarterly (roughly) meeting: face-to-face
11. Communication mechanisms
11.1 Communication within the group
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w3c-wai-er-wg list
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/WAI/ER/WG group home page
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bi-weekly phone meetings
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quarterly face-to-face meetings
11.2 Communication with W3C
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coordination through WAI Coordination Group to other WAI working
groups and
interest groups
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communication to W3C Member organizations through WAI monthly
bulletin
11.3 Communication with the public
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Through monthly bulletin, public home page.
12 Voting mechanisms and Escalation
This group is not producing formal W3C recommendations. The
voting
results will simply be indications of the personal opinions of people
in
the group. Therefore, there will be one vote per member (even if
there
are multiple members from a particular organization). Votes
shall
be submitted via email.
Escalation of issues within ER WG or between ER WG and IG goes to
the WAI Coordination Group.
13 Level of involvement of Team
20% Daniel Dardailler
14 W3C staff contact
Daniel Dardailler (danield@w3.org)
15 Estimated time commitment a group member
would
have to make in order to participate
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minimum 4 hours per week
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remain current on
w3c-wai-er-wg list & respond in timely
manner to
postings
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participate in monthly phone meetings or send regrets to chair
16 Participants
Participants will be drawn from the list of people writing Evaluation
and Repair tools at the time of starting the working group and people
with programming skills wanted to give some of their time to the
group.
A draft list is available.
This work will address all
disabilities that potentially affect web use (listed
alphabetically)
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cognitive (e.g. short term memory loss, learning disability,
dyslexia)
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hearing (including deafness and hard of hearing)
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motor (including difficulty of fine motor control and speed
limitations,
e.g. keypresses/min.
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vision (including low vision and total blindness)
The chair of this group is Daniel Dardailler.
Daniel Dardailler
Jun 30, 1998