September 18, 2003 - WCAG WG Teleconference Minutes

Present

Ben Caldwell, Andi Snow-Weaver, Gregg Vanderheiden, Bengt Farre, Cynthia Shelly, Kerstin Goldsmith, John Slatin, Michael Cooper, Roberto Castaldo, Roberto Scano, Matt May, Dave McDonald, Loretta Guarino Reid, Mike Barto, Tom Croucher, Paul Bohman

Regrets

Lee Roberts, Wendy Chisholm, Yvette Hoitink, Gian Sampson-Wild, Avi Arditti

Summary of results of discussion on Bug 170

suggestion is that sites be able to claim conformance even if ads are not compliant as long as the ads don't block content.

1. causing seizures
2. distraction
3. flashing screen readable text which might grab focus from screen readers
4. popups
5. ads which steal or keep keyboad focus
6. ads which make a page refresh and thus cause screen readers to reset

All but the seizure part would be okay if only continues for n seconds and then stops automatically or if it is easy for the user to stop it. (Number of seconds needs to be researched. Some felt 2 - 3 seconds to as much as 10 seconds.)

Also felt that if user agent could prevent or turn off these behaviors, there would be no requirement for the authors to do this but we would still recommended that authors not do it.

"Distraction" needs to be clearly defined because the whole point of ads is to distract.

Detailed discussion of bug 170 - requirements for advertising which is pushed to a web site

• Michael - should be accessible
• Andi - should comply to same guidelines as everything else
• Cynthia - should comply with guidelines, might want to have some techniques that address ads, some web sites don't have control over the ads that are pushed to their site
• Gregg - moot item because it should follow the same guidelines as everything else?
• Cynthia - might need exception for sites that have no control over advertising. when paying for something, have a choice but with advertising, the site owner is the seller. if want advertisers to buy ad space, can't always control them.
• John - agree that ads are web content so should come under the guidelines like everything else. use standard to push advertisers to be accessible. google no longer accepting popup ads
• Tom - don't agree with case for undue hardship, need to force advertisers to comply
• Gregg - are we making an advertising exception or an exception for a general category of which advertising is an example?
• Matt - need to make a case for content that is not under control of site owner. xhtml provides the capability to create document by assembling pieces. wrt advertising, for accessibility, require only that images have alt text and it doesn't flash. very few of sites that serve banners allow it to flash. if not accessible, they are only hurting themselves. owner of site cannot assert that all the banners they serve are accessible.
• Gregg - so we can't say anything at all?
• Matt - scope it so content that is drawn from outside source can be made an exception if necessary
• Gregg - sounds like conformance issue, not rule
• Matt - needs to be in the conformance statement that there is third party advertising content on the site that the owner has no control over.
• Cynthia - proposes that advertising should comply with guidelines but it's not the site that is displaying it but the site that originates it that is responsible for it. should not exempt other kinds of feeds that the site owner pays for.
• John - in success criteria for video feeds, we say that if you're transmitting broadcast video that meets accessibility requirements of broadcast, it is acceptable for WCAG 2. should be left to policy-setting bodies to decide what to do.
• Ben - wrt conformance scoping, author should be able to say that everything they have control over complies as long as they note the exception
• Gregg - disagree that you don't have a choice with ads. can go to another advertiser. also don't agree that you always have a choice with feeds that you buy. concern that if we allow people to exclude things from the conformance scheme, we will allow the situation where everything complies except checkout.
• Roberto - pasted URL into IRC.
• Gregg - according to cynthia's proposal the google ads would not be accessible but anyone who used the ads could say they are accessible. but what if it is flashing?
• Tom - how about making both parties responsible? include a notification if the ad is not accessible?
• Gregg - how about a mechanism so that people can get rid of them?
• Roberto - techniques document for banner ads
• Matt - if creating content on free server. if say that advertising has to be accessible, nobody that has a free server will be able to continue. if require that users have a way to suppress display of the ad, destroys the business model. there is a group that provides guidelines on appropriate flashiness of ads. appropriate to apply pressure on that group but can't say that advertising has to be accessible in order for a site to claim compliance.
• Gregg - proposal was not that ads don't appear but that they can be hidden after they have been displayed.
• Cynthia - agree with matt. re-iterate reason ads are different from other kinds of feeds. you "can" decide whether or not to accept ads. but site owner is not in position of power with ads. don't think it will work for consumers of ads to apply pressure to ad owners.
• Gregg - do we agree that ads should not have to conform to guidelines?
• Cynthia - yes
• John - no
• Gregg - do you think that pragmatically we can "not" make the exception?
• John - worried that it opens the door for people to come up with other things that they can exempt
• Gregg - if we make it specifically for advertising that is outside the site owner's control
• John - problem is that some blog sites have so many popup windows that screen reader users can't read the content
• Gregg - material that is not under site owner's control and is not what somebody goes to the site to read and does not interfere with the content somebody came to the site to read, it does not count against accessibility of the site. rationale is that ad doesn't block the content you're trying to read
• John - thinks the criteria "content that is not what you went to the site for" is too fuzzy.
• Gregg - if it's content that nobody goes to the site to read
• Cynthia - not testable
• Gregg - it is testable. never go to a site for the ads.
• Cynthia - doesn't think it is as clear cut as the criteria "if you're being paid to display the content"
• Gregg - stores get paid to list content
• Cynthia - not being paid to display particular html
• Cynthia - don't think "user intent" criteria works. will get a lot farther talking to double click about this than to site owners.
• Tom - can we require people to search for an ad provider that is accessible?
• Cynthia - don't think it "shouldn't" be accessible. just think the onus should be on the ad provider, not the site that sells the ad space
• Gregg - but what is our rationale for allowing a site to claim conformance if ad is not compliant
• Gregg - when selling a service, shouldn't be responsible for what the buyers do
• Michael - we have the ability to scope conformance claims. just scope ads out of conformance claims
• Gregg - don't think we will allow scoped conformance claims in the end because stores could exclude checkout
• Matt - need to come up with scenarios for what we consider to be accessible content coming from these services. Alt text and don't flash too much. can make the case that any ad on a page is an accessibility issue because people that have ADD get distracted by it. but have to be able to exclude something that people have no control over.
• Gregg - if user agent allowed you to deactivate it, it would solve the problem.
• Dave - a few behaviors are very offending. can we identify them and forbid only them?
• Gregg - site can be accessible with inaccessible ads as long as (a) and (b). still want ads to be accessible, especially if they advertise a discount.
• Dave - how big of an issue is flashing?
• Gregg - will soon have a tool for measuring flashing. expert says what is true on a tv screen is not necessarily true on a monitor. ex: flashing ad on tv screen not much of a problem because it is farther away and therefore occupies less of your viewing angle.
• Gregg - what else besides flashing - popup windows and stealing keyboard focus?
• Cynthia - probably okay as long as it goes away
• John - lots of them make the screen refresh which makes the screen reader start over.
• Gregg - seizures, distractions, popups, stealing keyboard focus, making pages refresh. all okay if only temporary except the seizure inducing things
• Cynthia - but isn't distraction the whole point of advertising? have to word carefully.
• Gregg - should be able to scroll screen to get rid of it.
• Cynthia - some browsers give user control of animated gifs.
• Matt - user agent guidelines have requirements to be able to stop, start, pause multimedia, prevent keyboard focus from being stolen, etc.
• Cynthia - agree that some things are the responsibility of the user agent and we should spec them that way even if not implemented today. should spec how we expect ad providers to comply with the guidelines. techniques doc for ad providers would be valuable thing.
• Michael - keeping focus is a permanent problem. popups can be a real problem to get back to content you were interested in.
• Gregg - can you make a plug-in that would add this functionality to existing browsers?
• Ben - IE allows you to turn off animated gifs and turn off flash.
• Gregg - but don't want to kill flash because there might be legitimate flash on the site
• Cynthia - there are popup blocker plug-ins. probably could do some of the others too.
• Michael - if problem caused by a plug-in, can't create another plug-in that fixes it.
• Tom - let's tell bob regan at Macromedia to fix the flash plug-in. what about portlets? google has information on portlets. will post links to list.
• Gregg - if we can create a plug-in that gets rid of this problem, no reason to write a requirement. could still be recommendation.

$Date: 2003/09/25 22:10:05 $ Andi Snow-Weaver