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User Agent Accessibility Guidelines Working Group (UAWG) Charter

  1. Mission
  2. Scope
  3. Deliverables
  4. Dependencies
  5. Duration
  6. Success
  7. Communication
  8. Confidentiality
  9. Voting
  10. Participation

Information about how to join the UAWG is available on the Web.

Note. Although this charter is available publicly, some of the links in this document refer to resources that require W3C Member access. This charter is written in accordance with section 4.2.2 of the W3C Process Document.


1. Mission

The mission of the User Agent Accessibility Guidelines Working Group (UAWG) is to produce guidelines for the development of accessible user agents: software that retrieves and renders Web content, including text, graphics, sounds, video, images, etc. In particular, the UAWG seeks to make the User Agent Accessibility Guidelines 1.0 a W3C Recommendation.

This mission is complementary to the work of other Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI) groups within the WAI Technical Activity and the WAI International Program Office Activity. The UAWG is part of the WAI Technical Activity.

The UAWG was first chartered in December 1997 (December 1997 charter). The UAWG was rechartered on 5 November 1999 (November 1999 charter, expired 30 April 2000).

2. Scope

The scope of the UAWG's work under this charter is to:

3. Deliverables

The UAWG has been working on the User Agent Accessibility Guidelines (UAAG) 1.0 since its original charter. On 10 March 2000, the W3C Director sent a Proposed Recommendation to the Advisory Committee for review. Based on comments received during that review, the UAWG intends to return to last call in early October 2000 with a substantially improved and clarified document. Towards its mission, the Working Group will continue to work on the following deliverables:

  1. The UAAG 1.0, which focuses on the accessibility of mainstream graphical user agents intended for use in conjunction with assistive technologies. The UAAG 1.0 must address cross-disability considerations, be consensus-based, technically sound, and reflect the most current technology. The UAWG intends for the (UAAG) 1.0 to become a W3C Recommendation.
  2. Techniques for (UAAG) 1.0, which provides implementation details for satisfying the requirements of the Guidelines. The UAWG intends for the Techniques document to become a W3C Note at the same time the Guidelines advances to Recommendation status.
  3. A report on the UAWG's experience producing the UAAG 1.0.
  4. An initial assessment of implementation of the UAAG 1.0;
  5. A report suggesting the next round of deliverables and direction for the next charter. For instance: a requirements document for additional deliverables, implementation tracking, improved guidance in features for orientation and navigation, guidelines for mobile and kiosk technologies, guidelines for accessible scripts and plug-ins, increased support for XML technologies and the W3C DOM, sample code, improved techniques documents, etc.;
  6. Minutes of UAWG meetings.

4. Dependencies

The UAWG should ensure consistency between the UAAG 1.0 and other WAI deliverables, including the "Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 1.0" and the "Authoring Tool Accessibility Guidelines 1.0."

The Protocols and Formats WG (PFWG public page also available) is the primary conduit for describing and resolving dependencies between WAI groups and other W3C Working Groups. Consequently, requirements for dependencies between the UAWG and other W3C WG's are primarily channeled through the Protocols and Formats Working Group.

The UAWG will interact with the following W3C Working Groups via the Protocols and Formats Working Group:

5. Duration

The current charter has a duration of twelve months, from November 2000 through October 2001.

6. Success

The success criteria for the UAWG are:

7. Communication

The Working Group will make use of the following communication mechanisms:

8. Confidentiality

The Working Groups proceedings, mailing list archives, charter, and deliverables will all be public.

9. Voting

This charter has been written in accordance with Section 3.3.2: W3C Process for consensus and votes of the 11 November 1999 Process Document and includes no voting procedures beyond what the Process Document requires.

10. Participation

The UAWG welcomes participation from W3C Member organizations, and also invites experts from disability organizations, accessibility research projects, government organizations, and others interested in promoting Web accessibility.

10.1 Member and Invited Expert participation

Participants are expected to observe the requirements of the Section 3.3.1: W3C Process for Working Groups. The following is an excerpt from that section:

Participation on an ongoing basis implies a serious commitment to the Working Group charter, including:

For this Working Group, the following commitment is expected:

10.2 W3C Team participation

10.3 Intellectual Property Rights (IPR)

The purpose of the UAWG is to produce public documents available royalty-free to everyone, following W3C standard IPR terms. Therefore, anyone commenting in the UAWG will be considered to offer these ideas as contributions to the UAWG documents. Organizations with IPR in areas related to the UAAG 1.0 or Techniques must disclose IPR as described in the W3C Process regarding IPR and W3C's IPR fact sheet. Invited experts are required to disclose IPR claims in the same manner as individuals from W3C Member organizations.

10.2 Joining the Working Group

Information about how to join the Working Group is available on the Web.


Jon Gunderson
Ian Jacobs
Judy Brewer
Last modified: $Date: 2001/12/18 21:57:39 $
$Revision: 1.7 $