Web Content Accessibility Guideines WG Meeting

11 November, 1999
4:00 - 5:00 PM EDT
Longfellow Bridge: (617-252-1038)

Attendees

Wendy Chisholm
Charles McCathieNevile
Ian Jacobs (scribe)
William Loughborough
Chuck Letourneau
Jason White
Jonathan Chetwynd

Regrets:

Gregory Rosmaita

Agenda

Reports on action items from last meeting.

ij: restructure techniques. but won't happen until UA goes to last call. either end of october, or mid-november.
Status: Not done. Will work with Wendy + Charles next week.
cmn: work on techniques once it is re structured.
Status: Not done.
cl: take Gl open issues to get people working on them.
Status:Done.
WC send notes to people, particularly to WAI-IG to drum up participation.
Status: Will wait until new charter ready.
Editors need to fix examples of the use of null alt-text and spaces in alt-text.
WC: Not easy while no consensus.
CMN put up a test case, have savvy and non-savvy users look at.
Status: Pending
CMN find out which user agents do not separate links with a space or which ATs read links together.
resolved: finish discussing use of meta data to claim conformance at next meeting.

Action WC: See how XML is handling whitespace. If they are not, get them thinking about it.

Finish discussing use of meta data to claim conformance at next meeting.

Discussed 28 October: Use PICS for conformance claims. Question: is this a sufficient way to claim conformance? If UAs can't deal with metadata, might end up with "closet conformance".

JW: I recall that at 28 October meeting there was consensus that metadata could be used in addition to one of the mechanisms specified in the Recommendation. The outstanding issue was whether it sufficed alone.

WC: The conformance claim must transform gracefully.

CMN: People might very well want to conform without putting a logo on the page (e.g., Microsoft, which might conform).

CL: Same for Canadian govt. They won't indicate W3C conformance directly. May point indirectly to WAI conformance.

CMN: The additional benefit of a metadata assertion is that you can build accessible archives of pages that claim conformance. Indirections such as that of the Candian govt can respond to queries by inference engines.

CL: I presume that the Canadian govt would have no problem with PICS statements.

Proposed: Put examples of metdata conformance clauses in Techniques.

JW: Problem is that the Guidelines don't allow for other conformance mechanisms.

Proposed: Issue an erratum.

CMN: Daniel Dardailler has a set of PICS statements.

JW: Does anyone have RDF statements?

Action Charles: Create a schema for conformance (with Dan Brickley).

Consensus: Once the WG has reviewed this, add to Techniques and erratum.

GL Charter

WC: Aim to have deliverables available in March/April since CSUN and next WWW conference.

WC: We need to produce a report end of November about the group's direction. I think we should solicit input from the list about this.

Action:

Wendy: 30 November current charter expires, so Wendy will send out call for suggestions about direction of group (new charter) and ask people to sign up.

See Wendy's: Wish List:

Guideline 11 - implications for PDF, deprecated elements, etc.

Issues:

Is PDF alone sufficient to get P2?
Resolved: No, since there are formats for the Web: html, xml. If you wish to provide another format in addition to these, that's fine.
What to do when no alternative to deprecated elements?

Action Editors (and announce results to list).

Clarify in errata that 11.2 says "avoid" and that in some cases it may not be possible to avoid.
In techniques, add MAP as a means to identify navigations structures. Adopt Wendy's proposal to use icons, etc.
Resurrect how 11.1 serves as an umbrella for the other checkpoints.

Action Wendy: Clean up the open issues list.

Relative units in images

WC: Based on a comment by Dave Clark. Is 20% realistic to use? A bad idea? We need to allow an exception for image dimensions since it won't work.

CMN: Using proportional sizing for raster-based image formats means that you may get weird shapes that make them more or less incomprehensible.

Action Wendy: Add to erratum /techniques that for raster-based, absolute dimensions ok. For scalable vector graphics percentages may be useful.

Label position (checkpoint 10.2)

Action Editors: Add to erratum that the Note after 10.2 only applies to text controls (not checkboxes or radio controls).

Report on GL

What we've done?
What is still necessary?
What areas need work in particular111?
What should the new charter say?

IJ: I propose that the Chairs, not Wendy, do the first draft.

Action Chuck: Draft a first draft of report with Gregg by next Wednesday.