Silver Subgroup meeting minutes of 9 August 2016

From WCAG WG

[09:35] <SarahHorton> https://www.w3.org/WAI/GL/wiki/Designing_Silver [09:35] <Lauriat> Scribe: Lauriat [09:37] <Lauriat> Sarah: On the wiki page, we have the overall summary, the meeting minutes, and then a few pages getting more into details about what we've worked on so far. [09:38] <Lauriat> AWK: I think that seems good. Haven't spent as much time in this subgroup, but the goal: get some clarity on the ideas of how best to proceed. Not about "These are the two options for what Silver will look like" but "This is what we think we should do to arrive at the decisions to speak to the direction." [09:38] <Lauriat> Sarah: Yeah, thinking about this in two phases: Designing the process and then designing Silver. Definitely in phase one now. [09:39] <Lauriat> AWK: Yeah, I don't envision this subgroup handling phase two, just a few people designing it. [09:40] <AWK> AWK: It might be the subgroup, but with an expanded set of participants [09:42] <Lauriat> Sarah: On the topic of designing the process, let's review what we've discussed so far. [09:42] <SarahHorton> https://docs.google.com/document/d/1irMybNoo-yUaUlEoo4beqIkTX7MUmyBX4b2eqZNjfR8/edit?usp=sharing [09:44] <Lauriat> Sarah: We want to offer basically an "a la carte" style menu of options to design Silver. We'll create a few "menus" that will describe the full process in ways that work well with each piece. Based on a few different design methods. [09:45] <Lauriat> Sarah: Participatory design, includes people affected by Silver. Design thinking, more of out-of-the-box thinking, prototyping to a final solution. User-centered design: still including those affected, but less participatory. [09:45] <Lauriat> Sarah: Also, keeping this list of considerations or constraints, simply as a brainstormed investory. [09:46] <Lauriat> Sarah: For the phases of Silver, we've modeled them more as a design thinking process. [09:46] <Lauriat> Sarah: In the first phase, we want to understand the needs of Silver, but we also can use this phase to identify other opportunities to make things better. [09:47] <Lauriat> Sarah: Surveys, analysis, asking questions, stuff like that. [09:48] <Lauriat> Sarah: In phase two, we take what we've learned from that and turn that into insights. Some of the things we'll get from the discovery phase may not be relevant, so we'll need to sift out the important pieces. We'll create personas, not of people with disabilities, but for those using WCAG/Silver. [09:49] <Lauriat> Sarah: In phase three, very much less defined, will happen as a result of what happens before. We'll have some conclusions and actionable insights so we can decide exactly how to move forward. At this point, we have three, maybe five ways to move forward with Silver, but we'll want to refine them before moving forward. [09:49] <Lauriat> Sarah: As we move forward, we want to get constant feedback as we go and put everything together. [09:50] <Lauriat> AWK: I certainly wouldn't minimize the part of doing the work itself, but this does have a lot of up-front work. [09:51] <Lauriat> Sarah: If you do the up-front work, it at least helps to prevent things from getting bogged down later on. [09:51] <Lauriat> AWK: When working on W3C standards, what happens is people who have for months/years "We'll review it later on." haven't kept up or given feedback on the process. [09:54] <Lauriat> AWK: How do we make sure that we get the feedback early on and include those who may not pay attention until later, even in candidate stage? [09:55] <Lauriat> Lauriat: Phase one, we want to reach out to as many as possible and as loudly as possible, in order to make sure people understand that this initial phase will shape not just the process, but Silver's goals entirely. [09:56] <Lauriat> AWK: Right, a huge challenge, especially considering that this is a world-wide, international, multi-lingual area. [09:57] <Lauriat> AWK: One comment about the document: if we share this document with others, we should describe things more, as many people won't have the background around each of these design methods. [09:58] <Lauriat> Sarah: Yep, I'll add definitions there. [09:58] <Lauriat> Sarah: What do you think of the overall approach? We want phase one to come up with a series of proposals to discuss during TPAC. [10:01] <Lauriat> AWK: Missed something in "a la carte" [10:01] <Lauriat> Lauriat: We'll present several different, end-to-end processes for consideration and discussion, so the document right now just shows what we want to make sure to account for in each when and as we draw them up. [10:02] <Lauriat> Sarah: Right, we'll speak to and rank each of these things with regard to impact, effort, cost, those sorts of considerations. Look at high-impact, low-effort sorts of things. [10:04] <Lauriat> AWK: Okay, that makes sense. [10:05] <Lauriat> AWK: One thing we have trouble with right now, which will soon become acute (like in 2.1): 2.1 will come about eight or nine years after WCAG 2.0 was published: you feel like you need to get everything in now, as you may need to wait another eight or nine years to add anything else. So not as much like an updatable document that allows us to be up to date with current technology, and allows us to have imperfections. [10:06] <Lauriat> AWK: If people know we'll have a Silver 2.1 in two years, they can maybe let something slide. [10:09] <Lauriat> Lauriat: Right, we have a huge consideration around the update process, looking at other standards which have laws referencing them, in how we can have a process that speaks to iterative building of the standard without breaking backward compatibility, etc. [10:10] <Lauriat> AWK: We'll, at this point, have Silver coming in around five years, so we'll need to start considering WCAG 2.2 maybe in two more years in order to keep things going. People have these concerns that things will get left out entirely. [10:10] <Lauriat> Sarah: I've added some of these to our overall list of considerations and I'll add in the definitions mentioned before. [10:11] <Lauriat> Sarah: In a way, these considerations relate to Silver in particular, and some relate more to the design process for Silver. Moving ahead, we'll build out this document more, assemble those menus of the day (with strengths and weaknesses and costs), and then in September at TPAC, can we get some time on those meetings? [10:12] <Lauriat> AWK: Sure, how much time to you need? [10:13] <Lauriat> AWK: Settings boundaries, we have two days of meetings. We'll talk about WCAG 2.1 (SC proposals, etc.), which we could easily take up the two days. For Silver, do we need a half day? Probably not ready for a full day, but initial thinking (not knowing exactly what we'll talk about) more like a few hour block, maybe half the day. [10:14] <AWK> SL: Goal is to make people aware of the options for how to proceed and make some decisions about the options for the process, and make decisions about when the decision is to be finalized [10:16] <Lauriat> Sarah: So, we'll talk through each option and go through maybe a participatory design session with the people in the room in order to make sure that everybody is participating in the design process there and moving forward. [10:17] <Lauriat> Lauriat: Including the constraints and goals, I think that makes sense to force some discussion in that room. [10:18] <Lauriat> Sarah: We could have an intensive focus on that discovery phase, hear from people things that we maybe didn't include for things that are needed. Maybe rather than dividing things up. [10:21] <Lauriat> Lauriat: Larger granularity so we don't get stuck in the weeds. [10:22] <Lauriat> AWK: We don't have to make a decision now, just as we get closer. [10:22] <Lauriat> Lauriat: We'll discuss more, maybe Friday, for the goals of the TPAC session and then how we'll guide things in order to decide how much time we need there.