Where to Incubate Silver
"Silver" is the codename for the incubation project to develop a major update to WCAG 2.x. One important question is where this work should take place - in a Community Group or within the WCAG Working Group.
The W3C Recommendation Track Readiness Best Practices document helped guide the Working Group in the decision to propose this work within the Working Group.
The Best Practices document suggests reasons in favor of and against incubation in a CG. Picking a few out for comment:
Arguments in favor of the CG incubation:
- The "aspirational" approach often assumes that whatever a WG produces will be implemented, but WGs without a reality check from implementers tend to create specs that don't get used in the real world.
- Recommendation track documents that don't get implemented or widely used do not advance W3C's mission or enhance its reputation
Response: WCAG is one of the W3C’s most widely adopted standards. Surely if the WG produced a bad standard it wouldn’t be adopted, but the need for this is real and we have every expectation that a major update that is developed with broad input from a wide range of stakeholders and which solves significant current pain points will be welcomed.
Arguments in favor of incubation within the WG:
- Requiring external incubation in a venue that doesn't require broad consensus could lead to key technical decisions being made in forums dominated by a few, with "level playing field" discussion beginning only when implementation momentum makes change difficult.
- There may be gaps in the patent commitment if all spec contributors to the incubation don't join the WG
Response: Broad stakeholder buy-in is critically important for WCAG work since implementers number in the many thousands when accounting for content developers and tool makers. Also, since this is work that is interwoven with the mainline WCAG 2.1 work, the Working Group sees value in maintaining the tighter connection between the efforts.
In addition, the best practices document supports the idea of incubation in a Working Group where the group has an established track record of responding to public comments, which WCAG does indeed have:
Strongly Recommended: Charters do not list specs as deliverables, and WGs do not publish FWPDs, until there is rough consensus across stakeholders that the spec solves a real problem, is likely to be implemented, and is likely to be used on the Web. This consensus could emerge from an incubation phase in WICG or another CG, or in a WG that has an established culture of taking and vetting suggestions from its public mailing list.
The Working Group prefers to be closely involved with the Silver project, and has many Working Group members that are primarily interested in this project. If the project is moved to a Community Group it will require additional liaison work to ensure that the effort is in sync with the WCAG 2.1 effort, and as mentioned above may require additional time to renegotiate items that reach consensus within the CG but that need to reach a higher bar of consensus within the WG. On balance, the WG feels that this effort is preferred within the WG.