Meeting Notes

From Accessibility for Children Community Group

2021

Launch / Kickoff / First Meeting (September 2, 2021)

  • Present: Maud Stiernet, Chiara Cielo L, Kris Anne Kinney, David Boulton, Melissa Malzkuhn, Suzanne Taylor

Welcome & Meeting Logistics

  • Accommodations: If you need anything additional, or know of anything to help the group collaborate better, please let us know via email.
  • Introduce ASL interpreters: Thank you Francine and Debbie for your precious help.
  • Code of Conduct:
    • To check if you haven’t done so far, but already have a very respectful community.
    • This does includes some more subtle guidance, as well as the usual guidance.

Member Introductions

  • Suzanne Taylor, Founder, Things Entertainment, LLC
    • Game development and Accessibility Consulting
    • Prior work in educational publishing, mentoring students with learning disabilities, tutoring students in Higher Education Opportunity Program
    • http://www.thingsentertainment.net
  • David Boulton (Education) Learning Activist & Director, Learning Stewards, a 501(c)(3) Non-Profit Organization
    • Worked in Software architecture at Apple
    • Is now supporting students in their learning paths by creating educational technology
      • The Magic Ladder Project
      • Interactive Orthography
    • Conducting professional learning programs
      • The Children of the Code Project
      • Boot Camps
    • "Healthful learning"
  • Kris Anne Kinney, Senior Accessibility Specialist, Educational Testing Service (often just called ETS)
    • Kris Anne provides training on creating accessible communications and documentation to ETS employees
      • K-12 & Adults
    • She is a Co-Organizer of the A11Y Princeton Meetup
    • and is a contributor to several W3C workgroups (COGA and Education and Outreach)
  • Chiara Cielo L, UX Designer, De Agostini
    • Chiara is a UX designer mainly for adults
    • is progressively in contact with teens as well
    • wants to share experience and good practices
  • Maud Stiernet, Owner, Researcher & Accessibility Consultant, alittleliningcomes.com & Correspondent for UNICEF

Walk Through of Wiki Main Page

  • Please do add to the Wiki - This is our space to share and work
    • Review the terms of W3C's Contributors Agreement if needed
  • The Wiki lists meeting info, goals, working documents, links/references to outside sources, and outside initiatives that the work of this group might benefit
  • UNICEF hosts initiatives that we might contribute to:
    • Accessibility initiative (all children learning)
      • Research and innovative solutions for better learning outcomes in low resources contexts
      • global symbols
      • The aim of our community on accessibility for children is to check where there are research gaps or missing information for further research in accessibility specifically.
      • UNICEF Accessibility Page
    • Artificial Intelligence
      • This department organizes a Global forum on AI for Children with a presentation of the second version of the policy guidance.
      • Currently has very little toward accessibility
      • A forum will be held virtually on November 30 - December 1, 2021 from 3:00 p.m. - 6:00 p.m. Maud is going and can address some accessibility issues of the group if ready at that time. Maud can forward invitation to anyone interested in the community.
  • We plan to contribute user needs to the WCAG 3.0/ Silver Initiative
    • In this community group, we have the advantage of not needing to reach consensus and this can help ensure innovative ideas are explored
      • We can track all ideas and their research status
      • We can encourage research where there are gaps in research
  • Other initiatives we might influence

Discussion Topics

  • The group brought up the following topics for further discussion
    • Difference between children and adults : children are ‘digital natives’, have different exploring behaviours, reading skills
    • Definition of disability: some children do not have an official disability diagnosis but can still encounter a lot of learning disabilities. The definition of disability / learning disabilities does not have a worldwide consensus and this is an important topic to take into account in our meetings and research.
    • When presenting children needs we will classify per topic but try and be as specific/ granular as possible with very practical examples when possible.


Monthly Demos & First Demo on September 16th

  • First demo/presentation will be by David Boulton
  • Second demo/presentation will be by Melissa Malzkuhn
  • Let Suzanne and Maud know if you would like to present
  • We will also invite outside presenters



Second Meeting (September 16, 2021)

  • Present: Danielle Guzman-Orth, Alexis Polanco, Allison Johnson, David Boulton, Melissa Malzkuhn, Suzanne Taylor, Maud Stiernet

Welcome & New Member Introductions

  • Allison Johnson: Associate Director of accessibility at curriculum associates an education/ tech assessment and instruction company, primarily serving the K 8 market, both in print textbooks with digital resources and products that include both a diagnostic and digital instruction lessons.
  • Alexis Polanco: Senior Product Manager at ETS (Educational Testing Service). He leads a team of designers, developers, UX researchers and a UX writer. He is currently studying at North Carolina State University for his Doctor of Design to help improve design guidelines for designers of assessments for Deaf and Hard of hearing students in the USA.
  • Danielle Guzman-Orth: Senior Research Scientist at ETS. She is specializing in research on validity and fairness for special populations through enhanced equitable and accessible educational design, instruction, and assessment opportunities. She also explores the intersection of English language learning and individual needs for dually identified English learners with disabilities.

How to collect and find important research

Methodology to include background and evidence - based research into our work

  • Suggestion to check reasonable accommodations and not to forget to check best practices for home assignments:

https://www.understood.org/articles/en/iep-accommodations-during-distance-learning

  • New research field for younger children (where we might need more input), most resources exist as of K-12

https://michiganvirtual.org/research/publications/supporting-students-with-disabilities-in-k-12-online-and-blended-learning/

  • More resources:

Council for Chief State School Officers accessibility manual https://learning.ccsso.org/council-of-chief-state-school-officers-ccsso-accessibility-manual-how-to-select-administer-and-evaluate-use-of-accessibility-supports-for-instruction-and-assessment-of-all-students

Institute on Community Integration (University of Minnesota) National Centre on Educational outcomes: https://ici.umn.edu/series/29

Microsoft Gaming accessibility guidelines: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/gaming/accessibility/guidelines

Other outputs for our work

  • Provide research gaps including in the field of artificial intelligence
  • Support organizations that work for children but don’t have accessibility standards/specialists
  • Check Quality control: refer to independent body/bodies to evaluate and indicate quality assurance?
  • Find literature on:

how to facilitate usability sessions with minors child - computer interaction in space articles evaluations or ratings by Type of platform laptop versus phone versus box, websites….

  • Find Funding to help leverage good practices in Design for accessibility.

i.e.: provide example games that are accessible, putting together a kit to help other people work towards accessible products/tools for children

Ideas to raise funds: open submissions, hackathons, NSF grants, AI for accessibility grant program, raise speaker fees to donate to the group…

Structure to collect funds: .org or non-profit needed: some members offered support to our community to act as a distribution shelf for this work

Document Format

Everyone is invited to edit both user needs and Meta data page, once you have officially joined the group and signed W3C's contributors’ agreement. Other W3C groups are also using these user needs templates, and it facilitates exchanges among groups.

  • Walk Through of User Needs Template

Draft of Children's Accessibility User Needs (Currently just working on the template/format for the user needs) Goal: identify additional user needs for children with disabilities that are not already covered by existing accessibility standards. It can also be that these needs are shared by adults but might be less critical for them. i.e..: for science, technology, engineering and math (STEM): providing tactile alternatives. Further categories Functional needs: related to vision Children’s Accessibility Need Categories: right to foundational experiences and peer interactions Research status: to be determined Sources: can be a link for more relevant info Braille Polyhedral Dice on Thingiverse

  • Walk Through of Meta Data Page

Metadata about (Categories for) Children’s Accessibility User Needs (with examples or use cases where needed for clarification) “Metadata,” as used here, are name-value(s) pairs that record information about user needs. In the next meeting we are planning to work together to write a few of the user needs. You can send any feedback or concerns about the format in the meantime.

Working definition of disability / accessibility (PowerPoint Presentation)

Presentations to be gathered in a google doc file for the community.

  • Models of disabilities and types of disabilities form the core body of knowledge for certification of accessibility professionals.

https://www.accessibilityassociation.org/s/certified-professional#:~:text=The%20IAAP%20Certified%20Professional%20in,%2C%20laws%2C%20and%20management%20strategies. All models have their advantages and challenges and cover part of realities. The charity model is good in the way it compensates but should not replace the State's role on the downside. The types of disabilities are usually better known but this way we keep compound and complex disabilities in mind. In this group we think about disabilities combined with the specificities of childhood like for instance the importance of immediate feedback (social) and fear of being judged (emotional).

  • Statistics in education:

Online learning led to even more exclusion due to the lack of accessibility. The 2020 Educause report to shows the importance of mental health and learning disabilities and the lack of accessible content.

  • Diagnosis delays:

even for well-known and recognized neurological disorders, like epilepsy there are still delays in diagnosis and then of course in terms of support.

  • Disability related costs for families’:

The diagram shows most expenses are related to mental health needs and human support.

  • International scope:

The 2017 UNESCO report shows international inconsistencies in terms of assessments, identification and services provided to students. Some countries still ask for medical disability recognition or extra assessment of difficulties to get accessibility help/ reasonable accommodation. Classifications and disability recognition are based on different criteria and there is no international consensus.

Having a common understanding of concepts will help us communicate our messages efficiently in a second phase. Next meeting will start with a product demo, and we will resume the presentation.

Third Meeting (September 30, 2021)

Interactive Orthography Presentation by David Boulton

  • Research- Feb 2020 latest NAEP evaluation
    • majority of students not ready to read at the grade level
    • Consequences: psychological issues as well, acquired learning disabilities
    • numerous experts highlight the complexity and issues caused by English
  • Free non-profit solution most students can use this set of symbols, works with e-readers

TPAC: Presentation to be approved by email

Slides on disability definition

  • Different categories and approaches internationally
  • Learning difficulties in the classroom
  • Gender differences (different profiles hyperactivity)
  • Discussion:
    • good to have an overview of international definitions & frameworks of childhood disability as a background
    • we do not need a static definition and can work needs-based.

Fourth Meeting (October 14, 2021)

Three user needs presented at TPAC breakout session on Oct 21st

  1. Need access to information without sound and without literacy
  2. Need access to information with limited ability to read captions
  3. Construct Relevance

TPAC Meeting (October 21, 2021)

TPAC is the W3C annual conference

Our chairs (Suzanne Taylor and Maud Stiernet) presented a breakout session on Accessibility for children on 21.10.2021 Session powerpoint and video


Presentation Topics

  • Why accessibility for children? Different profiles than adults, research gaps, age-appropriate accessibility.
  • Presentation of Active participants of the group / New members invitation
  • Defining accessibility (definitions, diagnoses, international perspectives, low resource environments, intersectionality…
  • Members’ work: interactive orthography, Visual language Lab…
  • Scope: web and software, problems and solutions from AI/XR, learning, entertainment
  • Impact: W3C WCAG3X and other organizations ie: policy guidance on AI for children (UNICEF)
  • Methodology and examples
  • User needs we document will have metadata:
    • Research status
    • Categories to ensure coverage and to help organize
  • Examples of user needs where high-level need is clear, but where research is needed for detailed needs and/or for  techniques
    • Children who need to have access to information without sound/literacy
    • Children who have limited ability to read captions
  • Examples of categories of user needs
    • The right to be accurately assessed (fair scoring)
    • proficiency prioritizing and later development of executive functions

Discussions

  • on differences between education and accessibility
  • international literacies and different challenges depending on the language

Opportunities to share our work

New possible outcome

  • Create a specific question list on children to complete self-review questionnaires used by international standards groups (privacy, security,...) 

Fifth Meeting

Presentation of the new members

  • Emeline Brulé
    • designer and lecturer - the School of Engineering and Informatics (University of Sussex)
    • front -end developer
    • part of the Creative Technology Research Group
    • PhD thesis (Telecom Paris):
      • schooling experiences visually impaired children in France
      • inclusion improved by the design of a multisensory curriculum
      • part of Accessimap research project (design of an audio-tactile display for images and schema)
  • Caidin Riley
  • Danielle Guzman-Orth
    • Senior Research Scientist on

Demo: Bilingual Resources for Literacy Development by Melissa Malzkuhn

  • Melissa founded the Motion Light Lab (“ML2”) 
    • part of the Gallaudet University Science of Learning Center on Visual Language and Visual Learning based in Washington.
  • the interdisciplinary lab Focuses on:
  • overview of different Apps and projects:
    • Literacy activities include 17 weeks of content: asl storytelling, asl lessons, worksheets - over 4000 subscriptions so far.
    • The Baobab 
      • translated into multiple spoken and sign language pairs
      • students can click written words to see the corresponding sign
      • there are 3 modes in each book: Watch, Read and Learn
        • watch mode: illustration and design integrated with watching the story in ASL
        • read mode:  more of a book look, and fingerspelling representation, a bridge from signing to literacy
        • learn mode: focus on vocabulary
        • based on research watching how children acquire literacy
    • The ASL APP to learn conversational ASL 2,500+ signs and phrases by 8 different native signers easy navigation and features Download 
    • Signing Avatars & Immersive Learning (SAIL) project
      • proof of concept immersive VR environment:
      • users enter virtual reality environment, and user's own movements are captured via a gesture-tracking system
      • fosters inclusion of underrepresented minorities in STEM.
      • integrates multiple technologies: avatars, motion capture systems, virtual reality, gesture tracking, and EEG 
      • avatars placed in a virtual reality landscape accessed via head-mounted goggles.
      • "Teacher" avatar guides users through an interactive ASL lesson involving both the observation and production of signs.
      • users learn ASL signs from first-person perspective and the third-person perspective.
      • challenges:  capture tone and facial grammar
  • all projects have been underpinned by research findings in the cognitive field, child development and bilingual literacy development.
  • current Research/Design Inquiries:
    • focus on quality design experience with illustrations and sign language together
    • with families at our core, since most deaf students are born into hearing families, if the family is signing in the home, this helps with all areas of development as well as literacy

TPAC Meeting Update

Sixth Meeting

End of presentation on concepts and scope of our work: Children vs adults (2 studies by Nielsen Norman Group)

  • Teenager’s UX: Designing for Teens (12-18) Teens perform worse than adults for 3 reasons:
    • insufficient reading skills
    • less sophisticated research strategies
    • dramatically lower levels of patience
    • discussion: The 3 teens issues are all related.
  • Study on usability issues (3-12 yrs)
    • need design style that follows different usability guidelines
    • more experienced using the Internet, not with a computer
    • swiped horizontally, scrolled when design gave sufficient cues if more to see
    • not good at: problem-solving, understanding the root of the issue, interpreting error messages
    • big differences between children and adults:
      • Exploration styles
      • Real-life metaphors spatial navigation (visual cues) useful for pre-readers.
      • Age targeted design crucial for small children
      • Adults have limited patience where children need instant gratification/support
      • Multiple navigation can be confusing for adults vs extremely confusing for children.
      • Scrolling and dragging movements have to be very large for small children
      • Children do not use the search function (primary web-entry for adults)
      • Discussion: Important to differentiate on what tool children operate (ie.:more dragging and swiping on phones and tablets than on computers)
  • CORE: children online- research and evidence: introducing concept map and consortium of multiple stakeholders including families in Europe.
    • discussion: Accessibility is not mentioned as such.
      • is it because accessibility is an umbrella/ multidisciplinary term
      • or because accessibility has less prevalence among EU researchers?
      • accessibility is usually mentioned for adults worldwide less in mappings for children
      • accessibility often confused with access
      • many EU researchers in the Child computer interaction (CCI) field: interesting research base to work on

User Needs and Formatting/Phrasing for this work

  • How this work can fit into WCAG 3.0 work
    • Covering XR: research gaps for children
      • healthy use for well-being
      • age appropriateness (some tools already referenced with caution under 13 years)
      • fields: education, entertainment, healthcare...
  • How can ideas be written and positioned as user needs for best integration with other W3C efforts
    • functional needs from a predefined list of options (functional needs list- W3C silver working group)
    • our community group can add complex needs, inborn etc suggestion to break down the needs more into detail
  • Set goal for when to share the templates/examples:
    • review draft (simplify, less wording)
    • start with captioning
  • Meeting for feedback-presentation of our user needs format et a Silver Friday (WCAG 3.0)

Seventh Meeting

Functional needs template

  • Document sent via email on google drive (5 steps approach).
    • members can make suggestions anytime or send functional needs.
    • document is written taking functional needs into account so it fits better for guidelines preparatory work.
    • Functional needs are not specific to users with disabilities, they are true for anyone
  • Example of a need: Breaks from text and text alternatives
    • too much text means losing students’ focus so you use images and exercises
    • but following WCAG2.0 rules reverts it to plain text
    • so children have to read or use a screen reader which is what we wanted to avoid
    • importance of:
      • customizable content
      • focus on mental health issues
      • user privacy
      • peer interactions
  • Functional needs in specific contexts
    • AR game: what was needed from the XR spec
      • set time limits, because xR can cause trouble for people with disabilities
      • what time is needed? Guidelines? (age, safety, …)
      • need for explanation: why it is a need, what type of use case to make it more actionable
  • Cognitive load and appropriateness for a child
    • how much info can be maintained in the mind
    • what is too much of any one type of information
    • how do you balance that so that you're able to give them an equitable experience according to their developmental level
    • how can we give the students the tools to regulate this (the cognitive load level) themselves?
    • tactiles that are sometimes required and sometimes optional, and sometimes not available
    • study on reading comprehension (braille, screen reader audio or narrator speech - which do they choose)
    • users should have an appropriate balance between agency and guidance when information is available in multiple ways.
  • Second language acquisition/ learning example: Dual language for all by 2030 policies
    • language preference or language support - embedding a digital glossary - screen reader access to bi-lingual education
    • from a Language proficiency standpoint: best if students use the embedded audio file for fluency
    • but students prefer the screenreader voice or think audio is redundant
    • construct with spoken voice - screen reader users who down arrow, versus students who use other keystrokes
    • even in higher education, participating through different means can be stressful (which is the best one?)
    • how to guide students through the options available through UDL (universal Design for learning) and accessibility.

Unicef Global forum on AI for children

  • 2020: Launch of the first AI policy guidance for children: 9 policy recommendations
  • 2021: Presentation of operational resources:
    • Questions, canvas, roadmaps for policymakers
    • Guides for teens and parents to implement the policy recommendations
      • both guides are structured the same way
    • Case studies: Finland, Nigeria, USA, Japan+EU, International,Sweden
    • Accessibility components highlighted per case study

Eighth Meeting

User Needs

  • Users are not disengaged by
    • Any sensory input (animation, sound, smell, haptics (vibration / force feedback / input confirmation )
    • Any heavily emphasized sensory descriptions (as are common in children’s writing)
    • Any need to change input methods and/or posture (important not to remove everything they just don’t like)
  • Engaging all senses as part of writing: users need experiences and discussions based on a variety of senses.
    • relationship between senses synesthesia (prevalence childhood, predictability,...)
    • literacy skills of taste and smell (descriptive skills, switching between senses and replacing strategies,...)

2022

First Meeting (January 6, 2022)

Presentation Subtitling for D/deaf and hard-of-hearing children by Maria Wünsche with Dr. phil. Nathalie Mälzer (University of Hiddelsheim)

  • Project timing: between 2017 and 2019 and new findings to be published in 2022
  • Project aim: develop recommendations for subtitling guidelines for German-speaking broadcasters for an audience of D/deaf and hard-of-children from ages 8 to 12.
  • Main questions:
    • how do children who are deaf and hard of hearing use subtitled TV in Germany?
    • how can we create subtitles that are comprehensible and also acceptable for our target audience?
  • Funding: European Regional Development Fund
  • Project Partners: German public broadcasters (Kika public German TV channel for children), 12 schools in Germany, some of them specialized for children who are deaf and hard of hearing, and the German Federation of the Deaf
  • Participants: 250 children between 8 to 12 years
  • Detail project:
    • participants watched six short clips that were subtitled (length 6 minutes per clip) according to different guidelines and then were asked to answer questions on the contents of the clip and give appreciation rate.
    • parents asked to fill out a questionnaire, with questions on personal information, such as the languages they use at home, the frequency with which they use subtitles.
  • Research gap:
    • little to no data available on the media usage of Deaf and Hard of Hearing children.
    • only data on media adults who are deaf and hard of hearing, or data on media use of hearing children.
  • Limitation of the study: reading skills systematically of our participants were not assessed.
  • For more information, recent publication by Maria Wünsche

Main Findings

  • Not only the hearing status (medical model) but social and cultural and linguistic factors need to be considered to gain a proper understanding of subtitling.
  • Central aspects to subtitling such as the speed and also the method of text reduction are not as relevant as expected, at least not in terms of content comprehension
  • Results in different sub groups indicate that there might be a need for more subtitled versions for our target group and the need for further research.
  • More than 60% of our target group rarely or never uses subtitles, and only 13% uses subtitles more frequently.
  • Children who use only spoken German language at home, rarely ever watched TV with subtitles. Some of them did not know what subtitles are used for. Children who use German sign language at home watch TV with subtitles regularly.
  • Comprehension
    • Hearing status: influenced the comprehension results. negative correlation with hearing status.
    • Age: older kids understood the programs better.
    • Sign vs spoken: no differences between children who grow up with signing language compared to those growing up in families who use spoken language.
    • Experience with subtitles: children who were more used to watching TV with subtitles did not understand the clips better than children with less experience in watching TV with subtitles.
    • Subtitling speed (9 characters per second vs 12 characters per second): surprisingly no difference in understanding lower speed. Netflix recommends up to 17 CPS for subtitles for children but the word rate of the clips used was not as high as needed for this kind of subtitling speed (for further research).
  • Appreciation (rating)
    • Sign vs spoken: Children growing up with sign language rated subtitles significantly more favorably than children growing up with spoken language.
    • The total of the project participants rated their subtitle experience positively with a score of: 2.2/out of 3. The group using sign language rated 2.54 out of 3 whereas the one with spoken language rated 2.1 out of 3. Possibly because the group using sign language is more experienced with subtitles.
    • Subtitling speed: children rated the fastest subtitles more negatively (though comprehension was similar)
  • Recommendation: using a slower subtitled speed of 9 CPS (characters per second) if possible. However, subtitles at a higher reading speed comprehension would not necessarily be affected in a negative way.

Discussion

  • What was the overall comprehension from participants?
    • No default group, overall comprehension: 50% of the question asked. 12-year-olds got around 65% of the questions right and the 8-year-olds, around 35%.
    • For methodical reasons, the study only had questions for which answers could not be found in the visuals, so as to encourage subtitle reading. The project operates from the assumption that participants can read.
  • What are the methods used for Speed change? (9 CPS, 12 CPS or 17 CPS)
    • different strategies to shorten subtitles
      • Text reduction should be made by using permissions.
      • Text omission
      • Paraphrasing problem if audio and subtitle differ, leads to confusion and higher cognitive load for the viewers.
    • for the purpose of the study: subtitle speed of 9 CPS,
    • two versions:
      • Text reduction by permissions ( syntactic structures and important keywords kept in the subtitles).
      • Paraphrases (language level adapted by substituting complex words, and also syntactic structures).
    • results
      • Comprehension same rates
      • Significant benefit for the paraphrase subtitles for children that are growing up with German and another spoken language.
      • Appreciation: all participants clearly preferred subtitles with omission. Closer to the audio, the original.
    • recommendation omission rather than paraphrasing but different subgroups might have different needs
    • visual cues:
      • Speaker identification: subtitle should be placed right below the speaker
      • One person (speaker) per line and colors should be used where possible.
      • Matching with outfit items (green glasses, green subtitles)
      • Include the name of the person when possible
      • Emojis can be used for speaker identification, sound descriptions, to convey the emotion.
  • Questionnaire was given to participants: more specifications
    • in plain language with pictures to help comprehension
    • dependent on the schools (different systems in Germany Federal State) questions and answers
      • spoken language
      • sign language interpreters, teachers, assistant teachers interpreting
  • Age selection of 8 to 12: could it be earlier? little data about deaf children in that younger age group with captions and reading subtitles
    • dependent on the programs of the public broadcaster don't create subtitles for programs for children that are younger than eight years.
    • Germany: children start school at 6 so difficult to start younger
    • having subtitles for younger ones could already help children get used to subtitling
  • Leaving subtitles on a solution?
    • from the research we see participants did not have a better comprehension if they had more experience with subtitles.
    • might be a statistical issue because children with hearing loss use more subtitles but still have a disadvantage.
    • surprising that this experience is not an important factor.
    • if children don't fully read, could they take advantage of seeing and being exposed to these various texts and start to build a word bank? With other needs groups?
  • Speed: encouraging results of the study.
    • understanding that speed is not an important factor and did not impact comprehension rates.
    • build confidence in children, parents, and teachers.
  • Needs awareness important
    • to reach out to TV broadcasters, researchers, schools…
    • use of audio description could be clearly mentioned on accessibility pages so that parents and teachers are aware of the benefits of subtitles
  • Legislation on TV subtitles in Germany?
    • for public broadcasters there are fewer options than for the private.
    • private broadcasters should try to make the program more accessible and it is verified every three years.
    • on some channels almost 100% subtitling but only have 5% sign language interpretation.
    • most subtitling happens on online TV, not on regular broadcasters

European Legislation on Accessibility

Second Meeting (January 20, 2022)

Sponsorship

  • Thank you so muchDeaf Services of Palo Alto for Sponsoring the Meeting Accommodations
  • The community group on accessibility for children is seeking additional sponsors blog post

Silver meeting

  • Presentation of our community group
    • Need for accessibility specifically for children
    • Methodology: evidence-based, involving users
    • Goals 2021-2022
    • Presentation of our document with initial notes on functional needs

Meeting Notes

Introduction: Chatbots and AI

  • Ability and agency in driving their learning
  • Protection of needs awareness as personal process not influenced by AI rules
  • Research the purpose and the use of AI for children? (not only the impact)
  • Secure quality of inside-out participation of children
  • Focus on the future, not the current limited use
  • W3C groups working on AI:

Machine Learning

AI knowledge interpretation

Cognitive AI working group

Functional Needs: User Need Categories as Functional Needs

  • Compare with documents from the functional needs workgroup (W3C)
  • Suggest breakdown of functional needs
  • Document will give 2 quick examples per need
  • When needed: One example of what it is one of what it isn’t (disambiguating)
  • Research subject to copyrights can be referenced on the research page or via a link.
  • Need discussed: Users need a balance between agency and guidance when information is available in multiple ways.

Third Meeting (February,3 2022)

Accommodations

Feedback from meeting Functional Needs Subgroup - next meetings

  • A11y 4 Children / Functional Needs to continue conversation and learn more about Matrix (limited: 3 members)
  • Protocols / UDL / A11y 4 Children (group)
  • Protocols / A11y 4 Children (group)

Why Children's Needs Require Specific Consideration

  • Assistive technology
    • Children with disabilities need accommodations that do not require learning Assistive Technologies that are not related to their specific disabilities /Overhead of learning AT:
      • User needs vs Learner needs
      • track stutter points - build portal of resources to respond / users can learn to track their own stutter points stutter points
      • tech can evolve with functional needs profile and their own expression of their needs
  • Independence
    • Children’s Rights: the right to self-reliance ART 23 UNCRC
    • Independence/ research on:
      • Cognitive load
      • How do students learn to reach this level of independence?
      • Where AI assistants are going in the future
      • “Look ahead” assumptions
      • Need road to skills to reach this
      • Need simplification of things like login screens
      • Research gaps
      • Global System solutions
  • Need to balance independence with safety/safeguards
    • Authentication security bubble - reduce cognitive load - various security levels
  • Intersectionality
    • children -cognitive disability
  • Healthy learning versus unhealthy learning Awareness
    • Adult at the same reading level: has whole background related to word recognition
    • background knowledge helps
    • while shame harms shame”
    • we can still avoid mind shame in children whereas as an adult it is a process to unlearn
  • Natural versus artificial learning challenges
    • Children learn by asking why questions: Need for reality-based answers
    • Concept-based knowledge not learned, acquired, or recognized as such
    • Children do not have awareness nor experience of conventions/ language codes
  • Option to create child-User Profiles (A11y guidelines)
    • Start with sensory basic
    • acquired learning disabilities
    • Emotion aversion to confusion
    • Complex needs

Fourth Meeting (February,17 2022)

Accommodations

Standard for an Age-Appropriate Digital Services Framework based on the 5-rights principles for children

  • Created by standards association-IEEE and Rights Foundation
  • Combining STEM and children's rights
  • Key principles- basics:
    • Recognition that the user is a child (under 18, not 13)
    • Acknowledgement of the diversity of children and young people
    • Presentation of information in an age-appropriate way
    • Utilization of fair terms appropriate for children
    • Prioritization of children’s best interests over commercial interests Ie: exclude children from predictive markets
  • The Standards:
    • Open Source link
    • The process includes preparation work and monitoring.
    • Certifications schemes are also foreseen
  • Section about accessibility
    • “Verify accessibility, which consists of the following tasks:

Verify that your product or service meets accessibility requirements and standards. Consider the needs of children with different needs (e.g., ensuring that your product or service is fully accessible if it is being integrated into children’s schools or education). NOTE—these activities can benefit from close cooperation with stakeholders and the guidance of the value lead.”

  • Suggestion that our community contacts the organization:
    • to ask mention of UNCRPD in the normative section (more recent than UNCRC).
    • and universal design principles
    • information accessibility for children as from preparation phase
    • future collaborations?
  • Case studies (scroll down on that page, you can order The document: APPLIED CASE STUDIES FOR CHILDREN’S DATA GOVERNANCE)
    • In-depth compilation of bridging principles to best practices
    • fostering positive online/offline experiences for children
    • Some examples of good practices:
      • Check if consent is given by resource owner
      • Transparency AI-driven decisions
      • Feedback to advertiser
      • Help children develop healthy habits
      • My gem inside (education platform for children with autism) to avoid special education and follow an inclusive path.
  • New US bill based on child data protection principles : California age-appropriate design code bill

Update on status of meetings with other W3C groups and Protocols

  • Invited Protocols subgroup chair to present
  • Reaching out to get on agenda of Functional Needs Group a second time
  • Intersectionality Meeting

WCAG 3 timelime Charter Proposal

  • Next 2-3 years - how A11y for Children should fit into the format
  • Deadline is extended: time for more research

Prepare for Prioritization Vote for next meetings


Fifth Meeting (March, 3 2022)

Update on collaboration with other groups

  • Protocols: waiting for response
  • Functional Needs subgroup: meeting on March 29th (additional members welcome 9-10 AM EST, please mail us)

Background document on Natural language interfaces and opportunities for feedback

Language Interface Accessibility User Requirements

  • Terminology and concept mapping children’s research refer to conversational AI (agents)

while developers use other concepts.

  • More people and (even children) will be developing those interfaces
  • Anyone should be able to understand guidelines through a similar concept of their understanding
  • Linking terminology can help children understand they are in contact with a bot and not a human being as some concepts like ‘agent’ or ‘bot’ refer to Artificial intelligence.
  • Possibility to send specifically child-related examples
  • Architecture of web 3: what about the data usage, ownership and content and right to forgetting or retrieving information to help with memory support? Is it managed by this new technology or a new approach?

Statistics about children’s usage EU

Collaborative work on Children's High Level User Needs

Continue discussion of balance between agency and guidance Children's High Level User Needs or Children's Accessibility Rights

  • Blind child and math image: has 2 different alternatives for an image, he can either have a text alternative or a tactile alternative, or both. How do they know which they need?
  • The child will need more than maths skills to be able to decide.
  • Users need a balance between agency and guidance when information is available in multiple ways that certainly states what we're talking about.
  • For any individual problem a child may have, you can probably find an adult who has that same issue. They may have the same reading, level, etc. and so I think to some extent this has to do with the fact that a child is growing up at the time, but also it has something to do with rights: Children have a right to share experience with peers.
  • Where an adult has the own responsibility, the child is going to receive it
  • Children have the right to be taught the scale of discerning what supporting materials, altered, or alternative materials best suit their current learning style.
  • Children have a right to guidance in deciding which alternative materials or accommodation will best suit their needs.
  • If we use rights, we should define things as rights broadly enough that they're not misused
  • example:bill in the State of Maryland last year that is now revised. It had well-intended language around access for students and disabilities, and had a particular focus on students who are blind or have low vision.

Sentences as: ‘students have a right to identical interactions as their peers' raised a lot of concern. What is identical, what is equitable?

  • Need to define the rights broadly enough, so that we're not necessarily implying one solution.
  • Context related rights
  • It is important to mention rights and link to children’s rights as it can be reinforcing and provide the lens for more stakeholders to understand the concept but we should leave room for implementation in different contexts.

Outreach Approaches

  • This group's social media
    • Topics
    • Which Networks: linked in and Perhaps tik tok?
    • Links with blog posts
    • Who to follow: National Association of the Deaf, C. R. E. S. T., world federation of the deaf…

Survey on Priorities for the Group for the next 6 months

Useful references on children's rights

Partnership opportunities

  • UDL certification for products
    • Cast and Digital Promise announced moving towards a certification pilot program where products can get certified udl compliant. Call for participation (walk-through interviews, pilot test)
  • Education for all learners
    • coalition of organizations committed to
      • resource sharing
      • community-building
      • that supports the efforts of the education community to meet the needs of students with disabilities.
  • Learner Variability project
    • Initiative to help building relationships by understanding each student’s variability in the content areas of their courses, their cognitive development, social emotional capacities, and their background.
    • The Learner Variability Navigator is a child framework that puts research to work for practitioners and edtech product developers.
    • It works with models, factors you want to address in a product or classroom and strategies to reach more learners.

Sixth Meeting (March, 17 2022)

Discussion on Survey

  • Highest priorities were:
    • High Level User Needs to support WCAG 3,
    • FAQs (Frequently Asked Questions) on Why Children's Needs Require Specific Consideration
    • Form positions on key issues and conduct advocacy / awareness (for example, use of AT during assessment)
    • Provide feedback on standards that are being developed such as commenting on W3C's Functional Needs and Natural Language Interface Accessibility User Requirements.
      • FAQs can allow other groups to move forward including children independently
      • Advocating can be very powerful, but will require reaching internal consensus first.

Group discussion on pronunciation in screen readers and how to ensure issues unique to children and education are considered (for WCAG 3.0)

  • Key issue: “I read it yesterday” would generally be pronounced “I reed it yesterday” in screen readers today.
  • Reach out the Pronunciation Taskforce who has done some work to solve issues seen in screen reader reading of Digital GRE.
  • Need to explore current uses of SSML (Speech Synthesis Markup Language)
  • Pronunciation based on zip code / regionalization
    • This can help students to (for example) learn to read based on language similar to that spoken at home. When learning to read, pronunciation as close as possible to current oral language is important.
    • Especially for students at risk of falling behind
    • Could AI determine student’s current oral language and match that, rather than relying on something like zip code?
    • Concerns: this could be discriminatory depriving students of the opportunity to naturally distinguish between cultures, learning school culture and language switching
    • Concerns: this could be discriminatory through assumption that living in a zip code means the home culture will match that zip code (or why would a child be served this when other children were served standard English).
    • Question: does W3C have an ethics or equity board or group that might weigh in if such work moved into W3C Working Groups, or other sources for equity expertise
  • School Culture vs Home Culture
    • Important to validate and confirm home culture while also building a bridge to school culture
  • Blue Sky Target, what if you could select not just pronunciation, but a specific narrator, such as cookie monster. How might this improve engagement?
  • Could implementations include more than pronunciation preferences, rather than just the pronunciation of a sentence or word, what about other representations of the meaning of that sentence or word: language, symbols, pictures
  • There are many different uses and positions for pronunciation in education
    • Pronunciation as accommodation
    • Pronunciation as part of learning to read (decode)
    • Pronunciation as part of learning to pronounce
    • Pronunciation in instruction vs formative assessment vs high stakes assessment
    • Pronunciation for Read Aloud vs TTS vs Screen Readers
    • Pronunciation of math presents a range of issues:
      • Completely Incorrect (e.g. 1.4 pronounced as 1400)
      • Mismatched to how people would generally speak the math
      • Mismatched to how students in a particular grade would speak the math
      • Even grade-appropriate correct pronunciation could be a disadvantage to students if it doesn’t match language used in that particular classroom
  • The problem of hydronyms could be solved through:
    • Context-based AI
    • Authoring tools that encourage specification of the meaning and then handle tagging for AT or mapping to a correct recorded pronunciation
  • In languages other than English, other aspects of how language is expressed verbally may also be important – not just pronunciation. For example, in Spanish, accents and stress can be important for comprehension.
  • Dual language for all initiatives – equity-driven research is leading to a call for a more authentic language experience where students or users can fluidly switch between language. In one study with students too young to use a UI or consciously request specific languages, researchers developed rapport speaking to students and then followed the students lead in which language to speak.
  • Should look into how BiteDance/TikTok handle Spanglish

Continued Discussion of Group's Presence on Social Media

  • no preference either way regarding the extent to which we work together on this
  • discussion on handle for social media, leaning toward using “a11y4kids”


Seventh Meeting (March, 31 2022)

Update on March 29th Functional Needs Subgroup Meeting

  • Discussion on Why we need accessibility for children:
    • Proportionality differences with adults ( For a specific need there can be more occurrences/prevalence in children than adults)
    • Children have evolving user needs
    • Difference between school and home culture
    • Importance to take on skills early, identifying early needs in children can also help adults or people never diagnosed as children
    • Terminology matchings and mapping i.e..: developer’s language Natural Language processing vs conversational AI in children’s sectors.
    • Added by a member: WCAG success criteria based on adult perspective or users who have had their disability for some time and know how to navigate assistive tech. ie.: Closed captioning (without reading) and screen readers (3rd or 4th-grade accessibility help at the earliest) Recommendations what system technology needed per age group
  • Expert contact who gives the neurological developments of the child per age, healthy habits, and topics of security/ safety. Members agree insights would be very interesting and we will contact the expert.
  • The documents we are editing as a community will be sent to the functional needs group (High level needs and why children's accessibility requires specific attention).

Two documents to work on as a community group in between meetings (based on selected priorities)

  • Are there functional needs that are different for children?
    • Our Group's Temporary Copy to Mark Up In the following weeks. We will then send it to the functional needs group and discuss it:
    • Main Functional / User Needs, and Outcomes
    • All group members should have access and are able to edit the document and add relevant expertise.
    • Thanks for your help between meetings if you have some spare time.
    • If you so not have editing permission, or have any trouble accessing or providing feedback, please contact the chairs of this group.
    • functional needs are typically almost descriptions of disabilities but written as i.e. 'used without vision, used with limited vision'.
    • Some High level needs added:
      • Psychological harm (prevalent in children)
      • Late diagnosis for children in vulnerable situations
      • Use with limited orientation or spatial tracking (for children with impact on social interaction (identifying familiar speaker, making friends) and impact on foundational learning confidence
      • Use with limited competence in interpretation of visual stimuli (stimuli rejected or left unrecognized which means impossibility to let this information ‘be perceived’)
      • Conflict between signals from different sensory modalities (interpreting sounds at different spatial locations)
      • Inner ear problems and dizziness, balance issues
      • Missing mental health sections
  • Why children's accessibility requires this specific attention-white paper (former FAQ)
    • Why children's accessibility requires this specific attention
    • How do we want to organize and structure our document?
    • Less Q&A but more like an informative/ white paper (community group publication)
    • Categories
      • proportionality
      • changing/ evolving needs
      • social needs
      • definitions (for broader audience): children, age -range, accessibility, usability
      • user testing with children- focus group with children- add in considerations
      • Research summary and gaps

Pronunciation task force: Contact to discuss specific cases (+ 3 members in the loop)

Prioritization survey: reach at non-responders and check latest comments

Social Media handle: A11y4Kids

Eighth Meeting (April, 14 2022)

Pronunciation Task Force Meeting

  • Pronunciation taskforce enthusiast about our input:
    • Helped them clarify their technical requirements especially Scenario tone of voice, Assessment contexts…
    • They studied TTS (text to speech) and our comments will help them include more contexts.
    • Pronunciation Taskforce use cases
    • We will continue to use our own chart of pronunciation contexts (for centralization purposes) Pronunciation a11y4children
    • In order to communicate with the pronunciation taskforce we should add our issues on github
    • One of the personalization modules should pass the recommendation status soon so we are asked to review personalization

AI for children

  • World Economic Forum Toolkit
    • Purpose: help companies develop trustworthy artificial intelligence for children and youth
    • 5 principles (FIRST) Fair, Inclusive, Responsible, Safe, Transparent
    • The tool defines the principles and uses checklists to help implement the 5 principles.
      • Each principle is linked to high level risks and less obvious risks (mitigation)
      • Greatest potential for harm (accessibility related) - Highest risk
        • Danger is to get a label and then think all accessibility issues are solved externally
        • Breaches of trust and consent
        • Emotional and developmental harm
        • Bias, unequal access and impact
      • Risk mitigation - medium risk
        • Proactive strategies for responsible governance
        • Use ongoing ethical thinking and imagination
        • Ethical governance for fairness
        • Test and train with data to understand the behaviour of the model and its areas of bias
    • Some examples of recommendations
      • Be transparent about the use of AI and why you are using it.
      • Avoid oversimplified models perpetuating bias
      • Don’t skip user-focused validation
      • Protect privacy and security also in the long run (especially children who will outgrow tools/ toys what about data kept)
      • Know the legal duties and regulatory constraints:
      • Build a diverse and capable team:
      • Train your team and provide resources for success with this checklist:
      • Offer expertise to inform development of regulations, standards and guidance:
      • Welcome principled efforts to label products and services
    • Tool includes an AI labelling system companies can include in their tech: age, accessibility, data use, sensors (ie.:embedded camera’s …), AI use, networks
    • Toolkit contains a Guide for Parents and Guardians to better understand and help their children responsibly use AI

Some interesting definitions of children using AI and why it is important to consider their specific situation.

White Paper Why Children's Needs Require Specific Consideration

  • Discussion about
    • Integrating UDL further in WCAG
    • Assistive technology and expanded core curriculum.
      • Team will work on a survey to be sent to teaching assistants, guardians, counselors … on required skills for AT per level.

Ninth Meeting (April, 28 2022)

Pronunciation Taskforce

  • Items discussed to prepare the GitHub issues to review and post at the next meeting
    • Children’s voices to be considered in text to speech (TTS) / screen readers for authenticity, identification and engagement in child-specific contexts (ie.: when a child is a speaker or author, in peer reviews or discussions, …)
    • Child-user context mapping:
      • (High risk - right tone and voice critical-unsupported, vulnerable context) child- user context (ie: sensitive situations with crisis information): need for a context mapping in which the child is a user and would need appropriate care through content/ information and also tone of voice. A review of the situation of potential crisis situations when trauma-informed care is needed or potential harm is possible due to a lack of appropriate tone, attention, and timely adapted reaction. Also, contexts where we assume the child is alone or in an unsupported or unattended situation.
      • (Mitigate - supported contexts) Educational or supported contexts: Some contexts like assessments or specific situations depend on the construct which is evaluated. If the student is aware that he is in contact with a more artificial voice and it does not impact performance. Context where the child is supported by professionals (family environment, education, childcare, health care,...)
      • (Awareness and information) While authentic-sounding voices can increase engagement and identification processes and this way, support learning (ie: gamification),those voices may sound so real a child would not be aware he is talking to a robot (in case of assistive tech set by default and inbuilt).
    • Importance of flexibility and choice: a child who just lost his grandparents might have trouble hearing a similar voice right after the event and would benefit from another option.
    • Definitions of tone of voice, affect, prosody. Concepts that are often considered external to the message but rather linked to the emotional context or register/ code (formal/ informal…), stress, and rhythm. And can actually have an impact and lead to miscommunication in some cases. Especially for children who have not yet learned the codes or nuances of conversational interactions.
    • More generic issue to consider pronunciation whenever possible, not as a stand-alone, but as part of the communication scheme and its multiple interactions and multidisciplinary dimensions. For children: especially consider child psychology and neurological development.
    • Check Research on the possible impact of voices and voice preferences: studies show that we prefer female voices female voice trust

Social Media

  • Twitter account: agreement to start with white paper. Also creation of a linked in company type profile.

Survey on assistive technology

  • waiting for WHO’s Global report on May 16 and GSMA to be released beginning of the summer


Tenth Meeting (May, 12 2022)

Pronunciation Taskforce

  • Update of the GitHub issue on child voices
  • Write Second Issue about Friendly voices to be added on GitHub and notify the pronunciation group.
  • Importance of third party (teacher, parent,…), Automated speech recognition context
  • Note about emotions:

Social Networks

  • Prepare post for GAADand presentation of our group + mail for approval by the group

Tools/innovations

  • AT
    • Adaptive Mouse kit and 3D print: consists of a mouse, attachable tail, hub and button.
      • Modular and customizable
      • Small and easier to lift and use
      • Joystick can be pushed with an elbow or a head
      • Eight buttons underneath can be programmed
      • 3D printing service Shapeways gives people additional options.
      • Not child specific but useful inputs
  • AI : PeopleLens
    • “PeopleLens is an open-ended AI system that offers people who are blind or who have low vision further resources to make sense of and engage with their immediate social surroundings.”
    • Some of the characteristics described in the article:
      • aims to guide the development of spatial attention skills believed to underpin social interaction through a series of games that learners using the PeopleLens can play with peers.
      • sets up situations in whichl earners can experience agency in social interaction.
      • draws on research and practice from psychology and speech and language therapy
      • research gaps: fundamental attentional processes most research doesn’t account for a missing sense and that research specific to visual impairment doesn’t provide a framework for joint attention beyond the age of 3.
      • privacy caution with facial recognition algorithm
        • Photographs aren’t stored but converted into a vector of numbers that represent a face.
        • Vectors differ from any vectors used in other systems
        • No video or identifying information is captured by the system
  • Discussions:
    • Academics usually find it important to be able to test a wide range of modulable tools for research use
    • Is there a feedback system on those tools? This is something we identify very often as a need in accessibility for children (ie.: cognitive differences)

Eleventh Meeting (May, 26 2022)

Pronunciation

  • Update of Github issue *Need for Authors to be able to set Social and Emotional Characteristics of TTS
  • Check if read speaker allows to modulate the emotionality of voices.

TPAC 2022 | Hybrid Meeting | 12-16 September 2022

Global report on assistive tech

  • The report, issued by WHO and Unicef has a clear focus on children.
    • Refers to children with didabilities in terms of statistics but 1 in 10 children (240mio) might not account for children with learning difficulties we know are more numerous per classroom for instance.
    • Insists on the importance of training professionals and carers.
    • still important, as suggested in the group, to check literacy needs of the children themselves before using AT to strengthen confidence and ensure positive user experiences.
    • Some focus points for field of study:
      • Robotics AI:importance of trust and capacity building
      • Position of:UDL| Accessibility| AT (accessibility requirements to be fulfilled for proper AT use)
      • For children user stories, have a look at : P.8 Sofia Brazil, p. 13 Aine (epilepsy monitors), p.48 Lupita (hearing aid), p.63 Sukanya (visual impairment/education)
  • The following topics were selected from the study for an overview aligned with accessibility for children interests.
    • Definitions of assistive technology by WHO and ISO: we might need the 2 definitions, especially in education.
      • WHO: application of organized knowledge and skills related to assistive products including systems and services
        • purpose =maintain or improve an individual’s functioning and independence, and thereby promote their well-being.
      • ISO: Product-oriented
        • Purpose: used by or for persons with disability for participation; to protect, support, train, measure or substitute for body functions/structures and activities prevent impairments, activity limitations or participation restrictions.
    • Key messages
      • Umbrella term for assistive products and their related systems and services
      • Enables and promotes the inclusion, participation and engagement of persons with disabilities,
      • Access to assistive technology is a human right, and a precondition for equal opportunities and participation
      • Need for AT is rising BUT majority of people who would benefit from it do not have sufficient access
      • 1/3 people (more than 2.5 billion) globally need at least one assistive product
      • need of one or more assistive products likely to rise to 3.5 billion by 2050
      • Assistive technology is estimated to result in a 9:1 return on investment, with positive ripple effects across communities.
    • Barriers
      • high cost - low availability - lack of support
      • Three types of barriers to enabling environments: infrastructural, informational & attitudinal.
      • Majority of people obtained their assistive products from the private sector, paid for either by themselves, or with financial support from family and friends
      • More than 50% of people found their assistive products were suitable for different environments and activities, and were satisfied with the related services
    • Systemic imporvements needed
      • Economic and social benefits make the case for health and welfare systems to invest in assistive products and related services.
      • Improving the assistive technology systems, products, provision, personnel and policies.
      • Where possible, assistive technology should be integrated within health and social care systems.
      • Establish standards, guidelines, regulations bylaws that ensure that environments are truly enabling, welcoming and can be used by all people, to the greatest extent possible, without the need for adaptation or specialized designs.
      • Regularly review standards and guidelines to ensure that they match ongoing technical developments, especially in the areas of digital and emerging technologies
    • Focus on Children
      • Nearly 240 million children have disabilities. 1/10 worldwide
      • Denying children the right to the products they need to thrive doesn’t only harm individual children, it deprives families and their communities of everything they could contribute if their needs were met,”
      • “Without access to assistive technology, children with disabilities will continue to miss out on their education, continue to be at a greater risk of child labor and continue to be subjected to stigma and discrimination, undermining their confidence and wellbeing.” UNICEF Executive Director Catherine Russell.
    • Emerging Tech AI 4 children
      • The World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) report on developments in the field of assistive technology presents an overwhelming number of advances in seven major emerging technology domains that will very likely have an impact on the field of assistive technology:
        • artificial intelligence
        • human–computer interfaces (CCI)
        • sensor technologies; robotics
        • advances in computing and connectivity
        • additive manufacturing
        • new materials
    • Robotics
      • Most rapidly developing technologies: robotics -assistive robots – autonomous systems that can ‘live’ with a person
      • assist in all kinds of daily life activities like dressing, toileting, eating, fetching things, and non-physical activities like interpersonal interaction
      • used in health care, educational and social settings
    • Purposes:
      • Supporting, caring for and educating children with autism
      • Facilitating play for children with physical disabilities
      • Providing distraction for children during medical treatment, rehabilitation, training
      • South Korea |Japan: national programmes to stimulate development of robot systems for health and social care, including for people living with functional difficulties.
    • Link with The Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC)
      • Rights relevant to assistive technology:
        • to the protection and care necessary for well-being;
        • to survival and the highest attainable standard of health;
        • to facilities for the rehabilitation of health;
        • to develop to the fullest;
        • to education;
        • to freedom of expression;
        • to access information and material from a diversity of sources; and to participate fully in family, cultural and social life.
        • In Article 23, the CRC specifically recognizes the right of children with disabilities to special care and assistance, free of charge whenever possible
    • Conditions for AT
      • Accessible, inclusive, barrier-free or age friendly environments can enable the use of assistive products and make life easier for everyone, including users and their caregivers.
      • The report also refers to W3C accessibility guidelines and webaim.org
      • Enabling environments are essential for users to access buildings, transport systems, digital spaces, etc.
    • The report makes 10 recommendations
      • Improve access to assistive technology within all key development sectors-health, education, labour and social care-
      • Ensure that assistive products are safe, effective & affordable
      • Enlarge, diversify and improve workforce capacity. The WHO Training on Assistive Products (TAP) and other similar materials can be used for training of the workforce.
      • Actively involve users of assistive technology and their families
      • Increase public awareness and combat stigma.
      • Invest in data and evidence-based policy The WHO rapid assistive technology assessment (rATA) tool can be used to collect population-based data
      • Invest in research, innovation and an enabling ecosystem
      • Develop and invest in enabling environments.
      • Include assistive technology in humanitarian responses.
      • Provide technical and economic assistance through international cooperation to support national efforts
    • Benefits of Assisitve tech at different levels
      • individual (dignity self-confidence,s elf-esteem),
      • community (everyone benefits from enabling environments, active participation,user's ability to contribute to family income and development of communities)
      • society (returns on investement for society, active participations reduces loneliness and delays medical and social care needs, reduced need for informal care and costs of formal care
    • 6 Steps of assistive tech access pathway : awareness, knowing how to obtain, reaching, receiving, follow up services, realizing rights
    • Partnerships
      • AT2030 seeks to transform access to life-changing assistive technology (AT) by creating partnerships with the private sector to build and shape markets testing innovative approaches and backing ‘what works' to get AT to those who need it the most
      • [1], the Global Partnership for Assistive Technology was launched in 2018 with the ambitious goal of catalysing action to reach 500 million more people with life-changing assistive technology (AT) by 2030.
      • Eastin information service on assistive technology (AT) serving older and disabled people, their families and carers across the globe.
    • Regulations and measures still needed:
      • legislation on difficulties in all functional domains
      • training & education on assistive tech + resources (and provisions)
      • AT well -spread across the territory

Twelfth Meeting (June, 9 2022)

Presentation by Gabriela Rapp on safety in a digital context

  • Gabriela Rapp is a consultant and project manager
    • She Works at Digital Health 24 empowering children, families, schools etc with good digital practices.
    • She works with children and NGO's to advocate for policy change.
    • She is based in Luxembourg, a country that also issued the International Guidelines on Terminology for the Protection of Children from Sexual Exploitation and Abuse.
    • Her work can help us better understand the developing needs of children in a digital world.
    • She published a Book: [Please_Do_Something_Cyber_Porn_Sex_Viole.html?id=UIC1zgEACAAJ&redir_esc=y/ Please do something]
  • Strategy of Gabriela’s work:
    • create a knowledge society instead of an information society in the digital world
    • Integrate children’s voices in her work on safety
    • Collaborated with Ministry of economy, health, family and education
  • Observations and interviews
    • She noticed a clear surge in violence from 2010 till 2016 with a change in business models and data processing and an increase cyberbullying, abuse, stress, sleepiness, missing concentration, drugs consumption, missing language for easy words (like bike) in children she interviewed.
    • There was a change in the likes of children: before 2010: my dog, playing outside after 2016 1/3 outside and the rest is screenrelated likes.
    • What children fear evolved from spiders to killer clowns, horror movies and games.
    • She also noticed new back pains headaches and problems related to sleep deprivation.
    • Less trust in adults and in democracy in children
    • In terms of privacy, she ran experiments to see if people easily disclose passwords to strangers.
      • 50% of surveyed people were ready to give their passwords in a few minutes. She also did the experiment with hackers who also disclosed passwords.
      • It is very easy to get hooked or manipulated.
      • For children, the impacts are exponential.
  • Second part of the project she involved more stakeholders:
    • University professors, behavioral researchers, constitutional judges
    • Who also confirmed her results
  • Some solutions proposed by Gabriela
    • Use a risk based in the digital world for children R (risk) = V (vulnerability) x (T) threat x (I) impact
    • Help children develop competences in the digital world
      • Creativity, Curiosity, Problem solving, Critical thinking, Cooperation, Information literacy, Media competence, World citizenship, Autonomous learning. (Prof. Dr. Frank Thissen, 2017, Luxembourg)
      • Happiness (self-confidence), Relaxation (Gabriela Rapp)
      • Core competences per age: Before 9
        • learn demands on oneself that fit (no over expectation / no under expectation)
        • learn self-controldevelop / learn positive emotionality through the model of the environment
        • learn decision making
        • learn to be socially involved
        • Note: To become good in one domain, e.g. writing, playing an instrument, programming, sports this requires about 10,000 to 12,000 hours of practice with always the right amount of supportive guidance.
    • Promote best practices in anti-cyberbullying (Zurick)
    • Pay attention not to mix different steps against violence (this is a very common mistake)
      • Sensibilisation/ awareness
      • Prevention
      • Intervention
      • Legislation
    • Be aware of the societal costs of bullying
  • Input/questions by members of the group
    • In a survey on safety online for SEND childrenIn a survey on safety online for SEND children, children highlight the lack of enforcement and action: “I respect the rules but there are no consequences for wrongdoing online?” This also makes them more likely to accept what people say online and trust them
    • W3C WCAG guidelines 3.0 include mental and cognitive issues and has a wider scope. And therefore we can integrate new accessibility requirements related to social and cognitive competences and literacy in the digital world.
    • Resources to help children understand violence and react to it (added to the next session agenda)


Thirteenth Meeting (June, 23 2022)

White paper

  • Deadline: End of August to prepare presentation for TPAC event 12-16 sept
  • Chairs check timings for remote presentation @TPAC
  • Outline:
    • Why accessibility for children
    • The existing
    • Research gaps
    • Discussion
      • Check audience and narrow down scope
      • Use vignettes and use cases across different selected contexts
      • Prioritize contexts-proportionalities (with the help of statistical analysis)

Presentation of global resources on safety

  • Global Kids Online International evidence base around children’s use of the internet
    • International research page gives access to the latest findings on children’s online access, risks and opportunities.
    • tool page for researchers
  • 5 rights and end violence against children toolkit :dedicated to online safety and gives methodologies and practical tools for policy making.
    • contains:
      • 10 Policy Action Areas + detailed roadmaps + key practical steps
      • A model policy that policymakers can adopt and adapt for country policies
      • Downloadable worksheets to create a policy fit for practice
      • Roadmap for governments, nation-states and organisations to build, review or improve their policies & practices with respect to children’s rights
    • Online safety is not just responding to risks and harms but Actively designing a digital environment that is safe for every child
      • 1 in 3 people online under the age of 18 or centrality of digital technology in children’s lives
      • must be formed with their privacy, safety and rights by design and by default
      • Preventative and holistic approach needed
    • Child online safety materials should be:
      • developed in consultation w/ children & parents/carers
      • age-appropriate
      • gender-neutral
      • easily accessible to children of different ages and their parents/carers
      • use visual materials where literacy is limited
      • consistent terms across platforms
      • detailed Presentation childonlinesafetytoolkit
    • Discussion:
      • more details needed on usability and challenges related to specific needs (ie: authentication)

External speakers suggestions (other topics and contacts welcome)

Metaverse and standards with W3C

  • W3C joins Metaverse standards forum
    • Important collaboration to have accessibility standards integrated into the metaverse:
    • W3C immersive web strategist Dominique Hazaël-Massieux declared “The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) is joining the Metaverse Standards Forum to accelerate the coordination with other standards organizations and metaverse stakeholders in building an interoperable platform for the metaverse, in which W3C’s Immersive Web vision is set to play a critical role.”

OECD future of education report

  • PART 1 In classroom
    • Learning tech /strong focus on diagnosing students’ knowledge
    • Adjusting feedback or problems at the:
      • task level (which task next?)
      • step level (what is the next step in a given task?)
      • the curriculum level (what topic or curriculum unit next?)
      • learner characteristics such as self-regulation, motivation and emotion.
    • “6 levels of automation of personalised learning” model
      • articulates the different roles of AI, teachers and learners
      • shows how hybrid human-AI solutions combine the strengths of human and artificial intelligence to implement personalised learning.
    • Personalisation/ learning engagement
      • broad overview of some promising avenues for measuring students’ level of engagement during learning in an automated way with digital technologies.
      • how these technologies can be designed to improve engagement on the onset of learning or when learners’ disengagement sets in.
      • different types of approaches to improve students’ engagement and learning by using data and technology, for example, facial feature analysis, gaze analysis or eye tracking, sometimes in online but often in in-presence environments.
    • Learning analytics and artificial intelligence to support teachers
      • equipped with sensors, cameras or connected devices,
      • classrooms become a hybrid physical-digital space in which computers analyse the behaviours of both students and teachers,
      • give teachers feedback on different parameters.
      • different types of dashboards and displays, teachers get real-time information, for example, about when to move on to the next sequence of the lesson, or receive feedback after the class for their professional development or the planning of their next lessons.
    • Technology provides specific services to the learning and engagement of students with physical impairments and mental health issues in education.
      • help bypass some of the obstacles to learning (e.g. text-to-speech or speech-to-text for blind and visually impaired students)
      • applications assist adults in providing a first diagnosis of special needs, as is the case with dysgraphia.
      • importance of human-AI systems, in the diagnosis and learning process.
      • smart technologies are still limited compared to human beings, they sometimes help connect students with special needs with teachers or other people (e.g. the operator of a digital learning environment helping students with autism spectrum disorder).
      • value of engaging students with special needs in the development of the technologies designed to support them.
    • Roles of robots as educators
      • robots can be educators and tutors (typically one-on-one) or peer learners (with students teaching robots about something they are learning).
      • social robots are designed for a learning environment supervised by teachers.
      • research shows robots are rather effective in the narrow tasks they perform, it seems unlikely that they will have the capability to replace teachers in the foreseeable future. Their cost is also a limit to their mainstreaming in education.
  • PART 2 use of smart technologies for the management of educational institutions and systems
    • Students who drop out have different profiles, which require a greater variety of policy interventions than those currently provided to students considered “at risk” of dropping out.
    • New generation of game-based standardised assessments and provide education systems with feedback on students’ higher-order or socio-emotional skills
    • Open data and open algorithms should allow third parties to verify the quality and fairness of algorithms.

Fourteenth Meeting (July, 7 2022)

Review White Paper Intro

  • Children’s Rights and Design Frameworks do not reflect the body of knowledge available in actionable accessibility standards
  • Accessibility Guidelines currently do not specifically include Children’s needs
  • Prevalence of certain accessibility needs is much greater in the population of children.
  • Changing needs
  • Sensitive slopes (time-critical)

User studies

  • Information to submit user studies to be included in the White paper :
  • Template to be sent by 13.07.2022
    • Title:
    • Topics addressed:
    • Challenges:
    • Opportunities:
    • Summary:
    • Detailed text or video + transcript to be sent by 20.08.2022 (around 300 to 500 words)


Fifteenth Meeting (July, 21 2022)

Welcoming our new members (alphabetical order)

  • Alena Fraser
    • Communications Advisor - Public Health Agency of Canada
  • Bob Dolan
    • Founder & Principal - Diverse Learners Consulting
    • Senior Innovation Scientist - CAST
    • Adjunct Faculty - Landmark College
  • Jadon Hawcroft:
    • Junior Support Technician - Public Health Agency of Canada
  • Madeline Rothberg:
    • Senior Subject Matter Expert on Accessible Technology - WGBH National center on Accessible Media

White paper

Use cases

  • List of use cases and issues with WCAG2 which will be solved or included in WCAG3
  • Our community group will add relevant information for children; ie: low stakes vs high stakes, clarify changing priorities for children etc.
  • The potential WCAG 3 use cases mentioned in the meeting have been added to the White Paper under the heading “WCAG 3 Use Cases.”
  • Next, we will draft final Github entries and approve them as a group in an upcoming meeting.

Personnalisation

  • WAI -adapt
    • Presentation of the WAI-Adapt specification and how it can be useful for children.
      • Possibility to add extra semantic information about content to enable personalization for individual user.
      • Extra support and facilitates user-agents for people with learning and cognitive disabilities.
      • Including AAC users
      • ie: symbols next to words | symbols to replace words | images to replace numbers | numbers to replace wordy qualitative explanations

TPAC 2022 | Annual W3C event

  • Early bird rate available “until August 5”
  • Inclusion fund
    • flexible offerings which can cover travel, childcare, quiet office space, equipment, or uncompensated time spend on standards work
  • Our community group will be running an online break-out session (details will follow-presentation by co-chairs)

Sixteenth Meeting (August, 4 2022)

FAQ

  • Good to have a lighter version, ‘quick read’
  • Different versions for different audiences (W3C, children’s rights, children)
  • Add introduction

White paper

  • Title (provision or standards needed instead of attention)
  • Do we want: checkpoints-indicators, a lens?
  • Identify overarching questions
  • Latest content in White Paper:
    • Definition of disability and functional needs (from broad to specific)
    • Some key concepts as an introduction: balancing needs, pre-required knowledge, transparent and transposable
  • Importance to address accessibility for disabled children specifically (W3C alignment)
    • Work on statistics is also relevant to show the quantitative impact of accessibility for children.
    • Statistics for EU: needs agency
  • Prioritize less invasive methods with most effect
  • Organize per needs (sensory-motor, …) see Washington group list
  • Guidelines could include teachers' guidance

Use case cognitive needs (limited agency, self initiative)

Survey on FAQ

  • Feedback from members via survey until 18.08 (next meeting) to help better prioritize content and clean white paper.

Seventeenth Meeting (August, 18 2022)

TPAC (W3C annual conference)

FAQ

  • Document covers 6 overarching topics which are relevant for children with disabilities.
  • Survey’s suggestions from repondents added to the FAQ /or discussed during meeting(Allison, Danielle, David, Emeline, Madeleine, Maud, Shahaf, Suzanne)
  • Positioning the document:
    • Intended use: fixed for TPAC presentation and can be adapted afterwards (living document)
    • Communication to W3C members and possibly external audience (needs to be clear and unambiguous)
    • Some key concepts : inclusion, scaffolding, thinking about the next stage, least restricting environments
    • Document remains generic for children with disabilities. Learning for instance is not only meant in educational contexts. More detail per context will be detailed in the white paper when relevant.
  • Graphics for TPAC in second page of FAQ (pies on combined functional needs and other relevant statistics to understand the growing proportionality of children whose needs to address through the standards and identify proportionality of needs (statistics to indicate ranges).
  • Chairs will finalize FAQ with graphics (stats) and prepare TPAC presentation.


Eighteenth Meeting (September, 1 2022)

FAQ

  • FAQ Document approved by the members by survey
  • To be presented by the chairs at TPAC 2022 on September 14th
    • Zoom invitation will be sent
    • Participation open to all

Research related to how close children sit to devices of which sizes (WCAG 2.2 understanding document on Flash/Flicker)

  • Research gap on children and safety resolution / distance from screen
  • Current Data stems from TV, computer but lack of info on multiple devices
  • Need for parental advice (more grip with smaller devices but what about safe distance)
  • Children switch devices more often than adults and do not always know how to adapt position etc

White paper

  • Age ranges
    • 18 years majority in most countries (should also be adopted online -see 5rights guidelines)
    • Can be until 21, depending on legislations and contexts worldwide
    • Age ranges can be useful for developmental needs / maturity so we will continue to work on defining age ranges/ age appropriateness which work best for children with specific needs (this is also a research gap).
  • Use cases
    • To be linked to check-list success criteria for children
    • White paper will contain summary of the indicators and link to more detailed subsections of success criteria
    • Research gaps section needs structure and categorization (surveys, practical studies, needs and preferences, accessibility needs,…)
    • Importance of Digital accessibility literacy: accessibility awareness and understanding of how to make it work.
    • With clear guidance for parents
  • Audience of the white paper: Broad: International organizations, parents, professionals, business,
  • 1 pager Executive summary and plain language
  • Max 10 to 15 pages and links for further detail/research

Nineteenth Meeting (September, 15 2022)

TPAC Summary

  • Update on the session / why Children's Accessibility Needs Require Specific Consideration
  • Powerpoint slides
  • TPAC slides 14-27 show the 6 key reasons why we should consider their needs separately from those of the general population of individuals with disabilities:
    • Functional needs change rapidly for children.
    • Combined functional needs are more common in children.
    • Common solutions for adults do not always work well for children.
    • Social considerations can be more important for children.
    • Children often have less awareness of and ability to express their needs
    • Children require independence to play and learn in their comfort zone
  • The second part was dedicated to the highlights of the White Paper:
    • Statistics
      • Disability worldwide
      • Child computer interaction
      • Monitoring quality/appropriateness of Ed Tech for children
    • Research Gaps classified in 3 categories:
      • Analytics & guidelines (the data)
      • Co-design (how we involve children with disability and innovation?)
      • Feed-back or monitoring
    • Outcomes:
      • list of 10 accessibility indicators for children
      • based on their needs and development of their digital accessibility literacy.
      • are those indicators taken into account in product stewardship/ process?
  • The audience agreed about having specific consideration for children in accessibility guidelines is important.
  • A recording of the event should be available soon and will be shared.

Diagnosis of Disabilities and Differences in Video Games and other Technology Worlds

  • Questions related to online diagnosis and support in games.
    • Ie: a child can be diagnosed with colorblindness on an online game and receive support for it. This does not mean he is aware it is color blindness and the support he receives through the online mode of his choice is available only on this specific game.
    • How can the child process the information?
    • How does the child get support for this? Guides for parents /teachers?
    • How are user insights stored?
    • Is there a personal needs profile?
    • Should there be a portable personal profile?
  • Item added as a user need: Users are given support if the technology reveals insights about the user

Choosing User Needs from our copy of user needs/functional needs document / our copy of user needs/functional needs document

  • anyone with link can comment: email chairs if you don't have edit access
  • to bring forward to the main WCAG 3 AGWG document
  • content added during the meeting:
    • Understandable /Provide help and instructions
      • Access:
        • Users can access help at the word level, as soon as there is something non-conductive - meaning needs occurring in the flow.
      • Support
        • Users get support to help them choose between accommodations/alternatives when multiple options are available
        • Alert awareness: Users can have technology adjust the timing based on the user’s response time
      • Make shareable section
        • importance of not -othering,
        • provide agency to reduce feeling of being ostracized
      • Age Appropriate Non-content aspects of products are age-appropriate (e.g. teenager learning to read has a story to work with that is interesting to them)
    • No Harm
      • Trauma sensitive approaches so children have agency to stop experience without being stigmatized
        • Users can stop, pause, slow down
        • Users are given power and agency - can judge product and stop at any time
        • Actionable triggers
        • Ability to stop the roller coaster - anonymously
        • Great harm results when content doesn't efficiently facilitate learning and causes the learner to shame-out.
        • For some children implementing agency might be a learned skill
        • Rejection sensitivity dysphoria
        • Student refuses 100% of the time to use Braille in the classroom - social desirability
        • Some children are great at judging their perceptions, others are not. (ie: Auto-evaluation and teacher or peer evaluation can be very different, need for interpretation, tools to understand support self awareness, selfcare,…

twentieth Meeting (September, 29 2022)

User Needs / Functional Needs

  • Functional Needs updates from our copy of user needs/functional needs document (anyone with the link can comment, email the chairs if you don't have edit access) to bring forward to the main WCAG 3 AGWG document.
  • We will try to finalize the document during our next sessions to meet deadlines for next submission.
  • Updates/ reviews of this meeting
    • Essentials
      • Use without psychological harm: Also known as psychological or verbal abuse, it is the most common form of child abuse. It can include constant rejection, hostility, teasing, bullying, yelling, criticism and exposure to family violence. The impacts of emotional abuse are just as harmful as physical abuse.
      • Children in vulnerable situations are at higher risk of being diagnosed or assessed late. Which means less obvious issues can remain unidentified and cause unwanted harm.
      • Use during diagnosis process
      • Use without feeling inadequate
      • Metrics - monitoring - quantified - slower may mean more thinking - threshold (fast enough to maintain comprehension and attention) of speed, but no competition
        • Mind-shame - reduce for reading
        • Mind-shame - avoid for new tech
      • Use without feeling different in a negative way (attitudes toward AT/Braille)
      • Differences between home and school settings - may work well at home, but can’t do in school
      • Use without public display
        • Maybe supports in situations with public display
        • Group turns
      • Use without chronic unnatural or artificial confusion (know to exist for orthography, may also exist for understanding UI elements)
        • Innate dyslexia
        • Learning environment mimicking this
    • Vision
      • Use with Cortical Visual Impairment (CVI)
      • Use with limited competence in interpretation of visual stimuli (stimuli rejected or left unrecognized which means impossibility to let this information ‘be perceived’ difficulties when learning visual differentiation)
    • Sensory intersections
      • Conflict between signals from different sensory modalities (interpreting sounds at different spatial locations)
    • Mobility
      • Use with limited dexterity but large potential to increase dexterity
    • Physical sensory intersections
      • Inner ear problems and dizziness, balance issues Middle ear infections (otitis media) can also cause poor balance and clumsiness that gets better following placement tubes in the ear. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/32371356/
      • Use with a sensory disability and maturing average fine motor control
      • Handedness (left/right hand) Directions written for right-handed children. (right click / left click / use without knowing left and right) Ed tech tool directions should change when you change settings to have mouse on other side.
    • Speech
      • Use without clear pronunciation
      • Use with evolving pronunciation (children, stroke recovery)
      • Use with different accents
    • Cognitive attention
      • Use with evolving / increasing hability to focus direct or shift (after treatment, support) confidence curve
    • Learning
      • Use when at-risk for shame-aversion
      • Use with shame-aversion (acquired learning disability)
  • Study on unpredictability in early life with limitations (mainly veteran respondents but interesting for comparison

'Results showed that early-life unpredictability was associated with greater symptomology of depression and anxiety, even when childhood trauma was absent. Additionally, for people with childhood trauma, early-life instability was related to worsened PTSD symptoms, as well as greater symptoms of depression, anxiety, and anhedonia'

New Access and equity subgroup (silver) at W3C

  • To follow up and contact when group is set up

Children’s rights: communication of our key messages to children rights’ organizations

Logo and images A11y4Kids for social networks in December (light meeting: December 22); Proposals welcome!

Twenty-first Meeting (October, 13 2022)

Review of User Story (Persona)

  • feedback on draft Stories of Web Users by the Education and Outreach Working Group of the Web Accessibility Initiative at the W3C
    • 8 stories: Preety:13 -year- old, Noor in senior year (17-18) and other 6 stories represent adults.
    • We were asked to provide feedback on the Preety story
    • All information from the meeting has been centralized in google document
    • We will take the next two weeks to explore these resources and comment asynchronously.
    • Feedback will be finalized at the next meeting (October 27th).

Communication towards Children's Rights sector

  • First brainstorming about how to communicate accessibility messages with children’s rights organizations.
  • This will be an ongoing discussion.
  • All members can provide feedback or new suggestions
  • Some suggestions: Key Messages?
    • Accessibility = how to include children with disabilities
    • Mention guidelines
    • Accessibility by design, success criteria
    • Common topics: protection, inclusion, ? commercial uses (no priority)
    • Relevant stats and data (monitoring, well-being, inclusion, participation, ..)
  • Some organizations to contact


Twenty-second Meeting (October, 27 2022)

Feedback on draft Stories of Web Users by the Education and Outreach Working Group of the Web Accessibility Initiative at the W3C

  • Thanks for all input by the group sent before 21.10 (deadline) our community group input on user stories
  • Overall Content of the project by the Education and Outreach Working Group
  • Goals and positioning of the project
    • Update and launch new videos to show how people with disabilities use the web
    • Requirement analysis of the project end in 2022.
    • The videos are not attempting to give complete representation but to give a diversity or wide range of situations that can occur **including a diversity of users but personas do not represent real people and do not allow for complete identification as is mentioned on the page:
    • “Note: The following scenarios are not real people. They do not address every kind of disability.”
  • Discussion accessibility for children Community Group
    • Audience: ways to involve teachers, parents and large audience
    • Authenticity: not all 13-year-olds would use ‘tech savvy’ quotations
    • Attitudes (sometimes adults/teachers are oblivious of the difficulties a child might have can be difficult to talk about difficulties.
    • Representation of children (statistical relevance)
  • Other options for future projects
    • Possibility to use video channels and social media: see someone tell their story and have audience get the opportunity to provide their own.
    • Empathy and identification for more impact
    • Examples of videos with children

Consensus for decisions (working methodology of our Community Group)

  • We allow group members to comment and send documents with individual comments if possible as work in progress.
  • When we need a consensus, chairs propose a feedback based on previous consensus and positioning and try to get approval from the members.
  • Members agree that chairs have to decide on priorities at some point if there is a deadline.
  • Consensus process with surveys /feedback and commenting as a work in progress (as done so far) is a good option for the members.

Functional needs page reviewed, updated and sent to the functional needs group

  • We still have the opportunity to comment at a later stage (final survey)

White paper

  • Large audience (children’s rights, teachers,…)
  • Possibility to summarize white paper on a page for younger users and web accessibility as the one for users

Twenty-third Meeting (November, 10 2022)

EU Glossary of human-centric artificial intelligence

  • links to accessibility guidelines and Universal Design principles
  • can be referred to as best practice for communication with other organizations

White Paper

  • transform our white paper to become "Younger Users" or "Child Users" resource similar to: Older Users Section from Education and Outreach Web Accessibility Initiative
    • We will adapt the white paper to be aligned with the 5 categories:
      • Background
      • Overlapping Needs: People who are Elderly and People with Disabilities
      • Guidelines and Other Standards
      • Specific Guidance on Designing for Older Users
      • Advocating and Educating

Discussion of the work of the Personalization (WAI-Adapt) Taskforce

Next meeting on December 8

Twenty- fourth Meeting (December, 8 2022)

Update on WAI-ADAPT [adapt-]

  • Discussion of the work of the Personalization Taskforce as suggested by Janina Sajka (feedback collected here)
  • We discussed the following WAI-Adapt Attributes and how they relate to children:
    • Simplification (“Adapt-Simplification”)
      • Three levels of adapt simplification (low, medium and critical) only take one value at a time: our community members think we need more options (ie.:content and control needed)
    • Adapt-Representation-Type
    • Distraction

Items for 2023 Prioritization Survey

White Paper Update on plans for White Paper to a resource similar to Older Users Section from Education and Outreach Web Accessibility Initiative

  • Draft document on Younger Users
    • Sections 1 and 2 were presented. Will be continued next meeting.
      • Shortage of research on children’s needs with disabilities. New EU research focused on skills mainly and integrate surveys on needs. Would it be an idea to use this for mapping?
      • Topics from the white paper in this section: definition of the child, Age range, and functional needs.
      • Overlapping needs: Unicef study on girls with disabilities online referring to WCAG relevant to children Accessible and inclusive solutions for girls with disabilities (Unicef, 2022 p.13).

Funding advocacy need for a tactile graphics display - video starting at timestamp 18:40

2023

First Meeting (January 5 2023)

Happy New Year on social networks

Draft document on Younger Users

  • Background: Shortage of research on children’s needs with disabilities. New EU research focused on skills mainly and integrate surveys on needs. Definitions from the white paper will be added (child, age range and functional needs)
  • Overlapping needs: Unicef study on girls with disabilities online referring to WCAG relevant to children Accessible and inclusive solutions for girls with disabilities (Unicef, 2022 p.13).
  • Guidelines: refer to international guidelines (graphic to show relations)
  • Specific needs: FAQ, Statistics (more specific intersectionality,...), Prevalence, Later recognition, functional needs (added to the matrix of the functional needs taskforce)
  • Advocacy & educating: request to our members to add more content : scalable initiatives, best practices and cases.
  • Discussions:
    • parallel with aging population need for learning (rehabilitation, evolving needs, how to use a mouse,...) this could also be added in the document on older users.
    • 'Meaning' needs: not always met in User Experience and loss of faith in agency.

Liaise with other community groups/ taskforces

  • Chairs to send mails about priorities in other groups
  • Bob Dolan joined Coga Group (1/ month)

Second Meeting (January, 19 2023)

Presentation by Bob Dolan

  • Bob Dolan is a neuroscientist, Founder & Principal at Diverse Learners Consulting and Adjunct Faculty at Landmark College.
  • Pedagogic Intent Ontology: the project, goals and organization
    • NSF-funded project named CLIPPS Customized Learning Interface Production from Pedagogic Semantics
    • The project aimed at creating a prototype architecture based on accessibility and Universal design principles via Bob Dolan’s [CAST expertise/ https://www.cast.org/]
    • The ultimate goal is to support the learning process
    • The output design of the project is based on user needs of the students and their learning experiences.
      • The project defined a set of rules that can act upon needs
      • Rules act upon annotations. There is a whole tagging process involved.
      • The taxonomy can be organized from most to least support
  • Examples:
    • Select content, sequences, renders in a way that makes more sense (hierarchical, a cartoon, powerpoint, textbook,…).
      • An object can have affective reward, design can foster sustained engagement
      • It is about rendering opportunities some examples of rendering (which are contextual)
      • Clearing style: you can have different versions for one content (ie photosynthesis)
      • The narrative tour, the sequence presentation, the annotated diagram, the static diagram
    • Vocabulary can be rendered as pop up, side br definitions, …
    • Writing: depends on organizational needs which will influence how much is presented at the same time, which navigation supports, if we need concept map or text, spatial vs linear representation…
      • Screen reader use will have an impact on how the content is presented.
  • Underlying research:
    • Choosing a representation that fits to the students’ needs in a particular context can be difficult to teach.
    • Most Learners want agency (‘let me try on my own’) and they need the ability to overwrite.
    • Teachers also need the ability to overwrite.
    • Students do not always make good choices whatever the learning is.
    • Children need metacognitive and socio-emotional skills (SEL, Social Emotional Learning) and these are difficult decisions to make for students
    • David Rose (Cast) quoted ‘we need to support teachers and students to stretch themselves in different modalities’.
    • Adaptivity (https://cisl.cast.org/research/adaptivity /CISL] Center for Inclusive Software for Learning-Cast Research): Model the process, with expert learners who have gained the skills for self-regulation and metacognition.
      • Features of the project(as described on Cisl page)
        • Refined text adaptivity
        • Preference setting adaptivity
        • Learning tools adaptivity
        • Content recommendations
  • Artificial Intelligence should not limit choices but offer flexibility
    • When Artificial Intelligence or recommendation systems make those decisions for children in some contexts like the choice of a movie to watch at home it is fine. But it is more problematic for learning and education.
    • Students have different learning styles and they could very easily be directed to very specific, non-diverse content rendering (similar to echo chambers in social media).
    • If a student has difficulties interpreting graphs, an AI system could very quickly decide not to expose the student to graphs anymore.
  • Discussions
    • Algorithm-informed diagnostic has value but we still need to surround the learners with options.
    • Humans with more knowledge can say they disagree and want more options, it is more difficult for children.
    • The learning process is more important than the content and is participative.
    • The tools exist and are available to the student: spell checkers, and speech recognition… the students have to be supported in making better choices
    • There are also ways to tag content that are more participative like a folksonomy (collaborative tagging).
    • in assessments there is sometimes a tension between accommodations, psychometrics, constructs measured
      • There should be flexibility and the context is important the fact that a child didn’t have breakfast could have an impact on results at an assessment but its impact will not be measured by a psychometrician.
      • Assessments need flexibility it is unfair if the analysis of skills is done in a predefined way. Some children will be left out of metrics. If we allow for flexibility we get information on what they really can do. Children need real choices not just top-down.
      • Need for consistency: things should be predictable when testing. Children should have the opportunity to practice on a keyboard, with equation editors before testing. An interface or environment should not be new on test day.
  • Links with WAI-ADAPT?
    • How many markups of content
    • How many user -agents?
    • How could it be integrated in a browser extension for instance?

Suzanne will coordinate feedback of the accessibility for children CG with the WAI-Adapt Task Force of the APA WG

Third Meeting (February, 2 2023)

Feedback of the accessibility for children CG with the WAI-Adapt Task Force of the APA WG

  • feedback and case study details
    • Case studies' structure
      • Description of the person’s skills
      • Example situation
      • Explanation of how WAI-ADAPT could help
    • Topics covered so far:
      • Parents of different ability
      • Agency to choose between prioritized choices
      • Children in Learning-specific contexts
      • Trauma – informed adaptations
      • Help to empathize (social skills)
      • Information on / understanding nudging techniques
      • Help systematizing (link/ mapping/ structuring)
      • Representation (identification/ self image)

Fourth Meeting (February, 16 2023)

Writing Use Cases for WAI-ADAPT

  • The Use Cases have 2 purposes:
    • WAI-ADAPT may use them in their Explainer Document, and we are formatting them to be easily used for this purpose
    • This is a way we can present Use Cases to WAI-ADAPT for their consideration while they write/refine the WAI-ADAPT specification
  • Cases added during the session:
  • Feedback and possibility to express meaning needs
    • Students with different needs (to be continued)
      • Concrete needs vs additional content
      • Allow the content author to give user agents information about the relationships between main concepts and details
    • Cognitive biases -decision fatigue

Discussion: Cognitive biases related to time seem to be more prevalent in children. To be analyzed / discussed with the group in future sessions

Fifth Meeting (March, 2 2023)

  • Mozilla festival Workshop
    • Disability Inclusive AI & Policy: From AI Bias to Implications in Education, Children & Disability Rights
    • Wednesday March 22nd 8.45 9.45 (US) 13:45 14:45 (EU)
    • Everyone welcome
  • Continue Use Cases for WAI-ADAPT
    • Students (person'a) Sasha
      • Prefers abstract concepts to real life scenarios, attention and focus issues
      • High functioning autism with commensurate attention deficit disorder and executive function challenges.
      • Possible help needed in interactive tasks with peers.
    • Cognitive biases: Awareness and prevalence among children with disabilities / specific needs. To be continued.

Sixth Meeting (March, 16 2023)

  • Contribution to send to the CENCENELEC (Standardization body) on Age appropriate digital services framework (accessibility specific) until April 4 2023
    • Answer will be prepared at next chair meeting and to be reviewed next meeting
  • AGWG Possible Direction: Conformance varies by product type or sector
  • Ready to send Use Cases for WAI-ADAPT and other feedback to Adapt Taskforce
  • Final addition to our list of items to prioritize in our 2023 priority survey
    • New items added this session :
      • WCAG 2.x gap analysis (or list of missing sub-success criteria) to inform WCAG 3 and/or be a temporary stand-alone note (to be referenced in docs such as Response to Cen cenelec)
      • White paper focusing on the necessity for addressing unmet learning/information needs for the cost-optimal evolution of online resources
      • Collect names of Alliances of children’s right organizations rather than reaching out group by group.
      • Help connect companies (e.g. AT companies) with funding opportunities
        • Invite grant field representative to join our group? Someone from “Grant Station”?
        • Provide suggestions for student projects and hackathons

Seventh Meeting (March, 30 2023)

  • Welcome new member Jan McSorley (CPACC),
    • Accessibility Consultant,
    • Former VP, Accessibility for Psychometrics & Testing Services (Pearson)
    • With more than 20 years of experience in the accessibility field.
  • Review of the Comment on Age appropriate digital services framework:
    • New elements on inclusive design, children without disability diagnosis/ invisible disabilities
  • Ways to Encourage new/more diverse membership
  • Check Survey for our group and deadlines
    • It will remain open through our next meeting (April 13)
    • It will close the day before the following meeting (Closes April 26; Meeting is April 27)
  • Use Cases for WAI-ADAPT and other feedback to Adapt Taskforce: finalization stage.
    • Cases are meant to address understanding in explicit ways

Eighth Meeting (April, 13 2023)

  • TPAC 2023 Hybrid Event Sevilla.
    • Possibility to meet with the group meeting -for our information-
    • but our group will organize the usual meetings .
  • Update on feedback submitted to Accessibility CEN CENELEC:
    • Response well received and will be discussed in workshops
    • No feedback expected around May 1st.
  • Reminder to answer The Prioritization Survey
  • Finalize feedback (to send after meeting on Bob Dolan Onthlogy meeting April 17th)

Ninth Meeting (April, 27 2023)

  • The Prioritization Survey remains open until next meeting
  • Use Cases for WAI-ADAPT ready to Adapt Taskforce (for feedback).
    • Possibility to ask students to present personas (recent, evolving attitudes, post covid impact,...) Bob Dolan will check if possible.
  • Discussion to address the topic of assistive robots (education, care,...): will not be addressed by the group actively but the group will continue to remain informed (emerging trends).
  • New resource: https://www.routledge.com/The-Routledge-International-Handbook-of-Childrens-Rights-and-Disability/Beckett-Callus/p/book/9780367521530 Topics to link to our work ie.: societal attitudes, how do students see themselves?, parental perspectives, children's voices...
  • Our group is looking for a third co-chair among members, thanks for contacting the chairs if interested.
  • Meeting Shira Goldberg, our new member: Assistive Technology Specialist at the Austin independent school District, 40+ campuses (K12 students). Her areas of expertise include IDEA, assistive technology tools like JAWS and Voiceover, as well as program management, training, and technology implementation.
  • This may fall under "Sensitive Topics" as defined in the W3C Code of Conduct
    • The Internet Watch Foundation on Children with SEND (UK document) related to child abuse contains a guide for parents/carers and teachers, resources and examples of conversations to help children. Our group could just be informed this material exists and is available open source. Discussion: check if this material could be useful for the COGA taskforce.

Tenth Meeting (May, 11 2023)

  • Initial Discussion of Ethics of Interface Strategy
    • Collaborations (chairs will check with COGA task force)
    • Document structure (matrix 5 concepts and scale for ethical use)
    • What it could govern (user testing, transparency, nudging/recommendations...)
    • Who are we protecting? (children, cognitive disabilities, ...)
      • Discussion to be continued next meeting
  • Deadline for our prioritization survey May 24.

Eleventh Meeting (May, 25 2023)

  • Review Results of the Prioritization Survey and Summary of results
    • Establish “Ethics of Interface,” encouraging designers to see healthiness of participation in human learning as the top priority https://forhumanity.center/ (offers free classes) “Future of Interface” initiative
    • WCAG 2.x gap analysis ( as a list of missing sub-success criteria) to inform WCAG 3 and/or be a temporary stand-alone note until WCAG 3 addresses more of children’s needs
    • Continue to evangelize the need for special consideration for Accessibility for Children within W3C
    • Host a Workshop designed to establish an “Ethics of Interface” in which the healthiness of participation and human learning is the priority
    • Evangelize the need for special consideration for Accessibility for Children among accessibility specialists in general
    • Write a stand-alone guide to making content/products accessible for children with disabilities, similar to COGA's document
    • Design for a prototype system that would give learners both a mechanism and reinforcement for flagging unmet learning/information needs
    • Present at Conferences
  • WAI-ADAPT: next steps A11y4childrenfeedback and collaborations at TPAC -scheduled meeting Meeting Monday, June 19th. Notes will be taken for members who would like to attend but have conflicting agendas.
  • Coga making content usable collaboration on the next update. Meeting on June 1st.
  • Vision Australia AT Survey: more statistics on adults but could help for comparisons.
  • EU project goal developing inclusive education (assistive tech and accessibility) for kindergarten (preschool) years. : Results + tips and tricks on how to use assistive tech in the classroom with little ones.
  • Discussion Ethics of Interface Strategy: First priority (another priority is to host a workshop on the same topic).
    • What is the Ethics of Interface? Topics discussed during this meeting:
      • Key points
        • Core Point: There is nothing more important than how children can learn
        • There is nothing more important than the quality of participation within the learning
        • Children naturally have an innate ability to regulate their learning in response to the natural world
        • Children do not have an innate ability to resist social engineering
      • Ensure
        • Help children express learning and meaning needs
      • Feedback
        • Respond to fluctuating learning needs
        • Awareness and participation in deciding what works for them is preserved
        • Information Technology should mirror organic learning
      • Avoid
        • Child comes to Website with a particular learning goal in mind, are they being thwarted?
        • Presuming what will work for a student
        • “Overaccommodating” and narrowing down a students field for comprehension (e.g. don’t hide all idioms)
        • Imitation of banishment solitary confinement (e.g. social media makes it seem like a group of people are present, but child gets no responses)
        • Conditioning students at school to continue to use IT that offers poor reinforcement patterns
        • Today’s children need practice judging and choosing between IT
      • Levels of Empowerment
        • Immediate
        • Intermediate
        • Long term
      • Scopes
        • Word
        • Sentence
        • Multiple choice question, Etc

12th Meeting (June 8, 2023)

  • Poll question: Given the uncertainty and level of change we know the future holds, what's more important than learning? nothing? something else?
  • Ability to Learn is most important aspect of education (implied: in a healthy way; learning healthy things)
  • Video game study in the 80s - students gravitated toward coherence, trustworthiness, responsiveness, gratification in challenge-based games and were performing more complex functions than many adults at work
  • content is a layer above responding to participation in learning
    • lack of responsiveness needs to be seen as doing harm
  • learning happens regardless (think of a person in a low-interest environment - they might learn negative things about themselves)
  • Right to positive learning:
    • responsiveness of the system
    • existence of more learning content so that the system can respond with appropriate materials (from alphabet, to words, to demonstrations)
  • might want to look into Dynamic Classroom Feedback efforts/lessons learned
  • future discussions:
    • how does this intersect with trauma informed approaches
    • how does preventing acquired learning disabilities fit with accessibility and disability landscape
      • aligned with or differentiated from different frameworks

13th Meeting (June 22, 2023)

  • Building the Business Case for Accessibility (Workshop) event is postponed we will try to attend if possible for an accessibility business case including children.
  • US Report on Artificial Intelligence and the future of Teaching and Learning
    • project page
      • addresses many concepts we often rely on in accessibility like variable learners, strength based learning
      • multiple references to students with disabilities, and multilingual learners
  • Quick summary of the meeting with WAI ADapt taskforce :
    • Presentation of the use cases we prepared with our community group
      • We reviewed cases
        • from 1.2.6 Trouble remembering and using details (based on “Brian” till 1.2.13 Help to empathize (social skills)
        • 1.2.9 Children in Learning-specific contexts seems to be a case which is easily implementable in the first stage.
  • Discussion on WAI-ADAPT use cases *specific* to the current working draft, which has the potential to bring AAC imagery to the Web.
  • Discussion of Ethics of Interface Strategy :
    • The right to read ?
    • Definition/ concept of learning?
    • Will be resumed over the next sessions.

14th Meeting (July, 6th 2023)

  • Proposal to create similar section to older users for children/ youth.
    • For children who have a diagnosis but include children who have none to help prevent acquired disabilities.
    • Evidence web is causing disabilities (psychological (emotional disturbances), trauma induced)
    • Check funding (foundations)
    • Check interest : W3C staff, Education and Outreach WorkGroup
    • Draft project description before TPAC (Sept 11-15.) Evidence and research, cases, model.
  • Discussion of Ethics of Interface Strategy
    • Acquired Learning (etc) Disabilities
      • Content Causes
      • UI Causes
      • Assessment Causes
        • Need to assess how well somebody is participating in learning
        • Assess emotional state and motivation during learning and during testing ()
      • Frigidity Causes
        • Learning needs are unpredictable
    • Children ‘s well-being : check for elements which can be in competition how to ensure that learning also remains ‘healthy’.
    • Opportunity to Map
      • hierarchy of learning needs, interactions
      • Differences between Intention – Representation – meaning
      • Universal response (content agnostic)
      • Ways to design content

15th Meeting (July, 20 2023)

  • Follow-up WAI-ADAPT AAC use cases
    • specific to the current working draft (recommendation status)
    • potential to bring AAC imagery
    • feedback via email to the WAI adapt working Group
    • Two AAC Use cases added:
      • crisis support and emmergency
      • multicontext support in education
    • Additional considerations on AAC
    • Hierarchy of needs : physiological, safety, love and belonging, esteem and self- actualization
    • severity
    • universality
    • frequency/proportionality
    • emergency

16th Meeting (August, 3 2023)

  • Write up feedback on COGA making content usable
    • Feedback to be considered together with the Ethics of interface strategy.
    • Some considerations to be continued :
      • use cases on children who do not have the ability to express/ comprehend their needs
      • use cases on children without reading skills
      • use cases on children in emegency situations
      • consider when explicit help finding / simplifying is secundary to learning needs / life skills or best interests (hierarchy / balance of needs)
      • behavior anticipation or repsonse to behavior cases : allow for flexibility (children who might need regulation cues or helps to focus might not need it at all times.
      • indicate where Artificial Intelligence systems can be used and mitigate risks.
      • indicate learning disabilities can be innate or acquired (definition)
      • Feedback : check participation situations but also feedback flow and how communication scheme can be impacted. Children still need to learn skills (where to get the info, that there is a place for feedback, what it can mean to them…)
  • TPAC:
    • check /schedule for relevant sessions thanks for sending email to the chairs if session seems relevant to our accessibility for children Community Group.
    • Proposed groups : Education and outreach, epub, privacy, timed txt.

17th Meeting (August, 17 2023)

  • Welcoming Shira Goldberg as our 3rd chair for The Accessibility for Children Community Group
    • Shira is Assistive Technology SpecialistAssistive Technology Specialist Austin Independent School District
    • and Certified Professional in Accessibility Core Competencies (International Association of Accessibility Professionals -IAAP)
  • Checking new timings for our regular meeting poll
  • Accessibility in gaming: Shira's proposal for further discussion and priorities
  • Response WAI Adapt team on use cases AAC
    • Discusion on what children frequently use PRC, Tobii, Assistiveware, makaton,…
    • 2 different approaches

18th Meeting (August, 31 2023)

  • Timings for next meetings confirmed
    • Poll results
    • Thursdays 11 am CET every two weeks, one hour meeting
    • Next Meeting: September 21, 2023
  • Discussion on Privacy
  • Discussion on Ethics of Interface Strategy
    • Summary of topics added this session :
      • Businesses often have a short attention plan.
        • Give this marketing value. (bring in marketing expert)
        • Objective: Can this be effective toward a specific learning goal short term to make ethics of interface overall more marketable
      • UDL
      • Structural responsivity within the Web - for differentiation and expression of needs. People in general.
        • Educators and technologies are aware of the dangers of short circuting participation
        • Efficiency to support learning/consuming of tech services
        • Assumption that going all digital will be benefit everyone (tactile is essential for blind students Working memory Gaining vocabulary)
        • Warning: new != innovative
        • Inclusion as well
        • Personalized instruction on computer: interface looked the same for all grade levels - behavioral issues reduced (less shame triggering) 1:1 interface was important.
      • Teacher Pressure
        • Behaviour
        • Maintain 1:1 devices
        • Basic needs not met
        • Trauma informed practices
      • Ed Tech Still Inaccessible
        • Causes privacy issues as well - forced to share disability info
      • Pacing
        • Self Paced - Not computer guided
        • Auto Paced based on pre-game


19th Meeting (September, 14 2023)

  • WAI-ADAPT use cases on AAC [2]
    • Next Steps
      • Write up on this with images/examples.
      • Should we combine this with reaching out to teachers (polling) speech therapists.
      • Ask the Adapt team for their use cases.
      • Talk American Speech Language Hearing Association ASHA -might be willing to help with an audience. (Conference in the fall.)
      • LinkedIn discussion of whether MS should get into doing AAC
    • Crisis support and emergency
      • Crisis support sites could use the AAC markup to create an onscreen “keyboard” of common words / phrases and universal icons that people use when seeking help.
      • When an AAC user visits, they would see an appropriate and useful selection of familiar symbols ready to use.
      • We want to caution that this should be coupled with other communication supports such as having speech spoken when the student rolls over image buttons or text buttons or text.
    • Safe Online Multiplayer Game
      • Game offers only pre-written communications for players to choose in communicating with each other.
      • Children who can’t read these communications are left out of the in-game communication.
      • Many of the communications are simple
      • Explanation of how WAI-ADAPT could help
        • The WAI-ADAPT mapping to the user’s own symbols, can be one possible option used to make these more understandable.
        • The student sees the same buttons to select what they want to say that the other students see, but the text is mostly or fully translated into their familiar AAC symbols
        • This should be coupled with other communication supports such as having speech spoken when the student rolls over image buttons or text buttons or text.
        • In addition, this allows the game to be used to practice AAC communications.
    • Multi-context support in education :
      • AAC can help in different contexts in education (classroom practice, homework and assessments)
      • Some basic and universal needs or linked to emergency situations can be answered by AAC
      • Explanation of how WAI-ADAPT could help
        • Separate set of support which follows children in different contexts (web, homework, practice, tests)
        • Can be Integrated in the learner ‘s need profile and assessment accessibility profile/ Web experience tailored
        • One Click in case of an emotional crisis
        • Example of a US student’s personal needs profile (ie : Keyboard AAC)
      • Explanation of how WAI-ADAPT could help
        • The WAI-ADAPT mapping to the user’s own symbols, can be used to provide the ability to speak and to type in their academic applications, while keeping their main AAC screens set for fast in person communication.
        • Slow communication is definitely a challenge, we still question if this is enough of a solution to be worth learning the new UI.

20th Meeting (September 28, 2023)

  • Discussion about meeting attendance and possible reasons for lapse
  • More tangible goals long term
  • What contributions and goals do we have for 3.0?
  • Discussion about open ended questions for prioritization survey
    • For high level goals - open ended questions
    • Go back and get specifics once those are defined
  • Feedback from Wcag 3.0 on these goals
  • Sending out calendar invite for future group meetings - the calendar meetings have fallen away; might boost attendance
  • CEN-CENELEC IEEE ‘Age appropriate digital services framework' our community group contributed to, is published.
    • Refers to accessibility but not how to make it accessible for children
    • W3C A11y for Children group is mentioned as a contributor
    • Based on children’s rights, data protection, moderation
    • Age-appropriate frameworks, respecting the developmental needs of the child in the document
    • A lot of information about child well-being, possible threats to best interest of the child
      • Adults should not put themselves first but it should be child-centric
    • Age and developmental stages are relevant
    • This group is now mentioned internationally in this document
    • Question: who is the intended user for this document?
      • Answer: companies who are voluntarily complying with accessibility standards
      • Also, schools purchasing accessible technology and programs - Maud will suggest making a checklist that comes out of this document for schools to use as a guide
      • Focusing on who is the end user and what the hook will be to get professionals aware and utilizing this document
      • Tangible take-aways for schools and edtech companies
        • Allison offered that some states/school districts are putting forth more tangible and nuanced questions before purchasing curriculum online, for example: “Do you have a JAWS user that has tested this product?”
      • 9 out of 10 VPAT requests are actually ACR requests (Accessibility Conformance Report) - possible mentality shift - this is no long voluntary (as opposed to VPAT - Voluntary Product Accessibility Template) - may be a trend in the States
    • W3C Annual event -TPAC: updates - will save for the next meeting
    • Priority topic education as new laws are passed to make edtech accessible law
      • Maryland passed a bill cowritten by National Federation for the Blind
        • Requires compliance with the latest version of WCAG
        • Illinois and New Jersey have also had versions of these bills
      • The bill says - WCAG is a measure of how accessible educational materials are
        • Also states that there has to be equal access for students who are blind or visually impaired
        • Requires submission of VPAT/ACR for each ed tech software
        • Submit documentation for how compliant your product is
        • Requires a “specialist” from the school district to review the edtech product and do some testing with AT
        • Schools and companies have to get all of this information this school year and then next year have to be fully compliant
        • Law now says district would indemnify companies for fines and lawsuits
        • 2024 will be a formative year for implementing this law
        • Some appeals can be made
        • Still leaves publishers at risk for not being in compliance
      • Timelines for this bill- a quick solution for children to make the software accessible might be a cognitive overload of keystrokes or actions for the user - could this be an intersection with Ethics of Interface?
      • Newsela wrote a good article about the accessibility law - Allison will send us a list of resources and articles
  • Allison Johnson's links/resources:

MD Bill:

https://ischool.umd.edu/news/new-law-ensures-equivalent-access-to-digital-tools-for-all-of-marylands-k-12-students/ https://mgaleg.maryland.gov/mgawebsite/Legislation/Details/SB0617?ys=2022RS https://newsela.com/about/blog/legislation-makes-digital-tools-accessible/#:~:text=At%20Newsela%2C%20we%27re%20committed,and%20containing%20screen%20reader%2Dfriendly


NCEO Accommodations Toolkit:

https://publications.ici.umn.edu/nceo/accommodations-toolkit/introduction


CCSSO Accessibility Manual:

https://learning.ccsso.org/council-of-chief-state-school-officers-ccsso-accessibility-manual-how-to-select-administer-and-evaluate-use-of-accessibility-supports-for-instruction-and-assessment-of-all-students

21st Meeting (October 12, 2023)

  • TPAC Overview
    • Autonomous Web agents - is there a use case for children?
    • There are no topics for AI on children yet - this group could possibly work on some use cases
    • Immersive web - a working group that might need our assistance in working on some cases - the chairs will give us examples
    • Privacy community group - Maud has joined this group and will bring issues relevant to children to our group
    • World Accessibility Initiative priorities for 2024
    • AI accessibility
    • Improving guidance
    • Opportunities/ considerations for the group from TPAC 2023:
    • Autonomous Web agents CG : possibility to work on a use case for children
    • Immersive web working group: possibility for us to work on some cases. Contact chairs (Ada Rose Appel, Chris Wilson Google). They would give us examples of situations they would like us to reflect on for cases).
    • Privacy CG Maud joined as a member Meeting notes we could make a list of issues and check if different for children (storage access, third party cookies, invasive fingerprints,...)
    • Media and entertainment: less potential for our group but a very nice group to contact if needed
    • Maturity model
    • WAI Adapt presentation on AAC
    • WAI priorities for 2024
    • Maud met member at TPAC and may help with funding for initiatives - alternatives to money, perhaps a research group or training?
    • Suzanne - WCAG 3 should have a requirement to address children - would funding be helpful?
    • Anyone who wants to work on WCAG 3 can be part of the Silver Community Group- this is an open group
    • You can also apply to be a member expert - requires 4 hours per week of contribution
      • This group can reach out to the leaders of the Silver Group and suggest a subgroup that works on WCAG 3 - should there be a children’s version of this Silver Community Group
    • Does this group have the right skill set?
    • Maud volunteered to join Silver Community Group to get the latest topics, and to mention that our group is willing to contribute
    • Focusing on education and accessibility - would the group be willing to work on something tangible by the end of the year to support education and accessibility?
    • At the end of the year this group completes a project focusing on one project and having a deliverable by then
    • Accessibility legislation - sharing information on the links
    • Checking in Europe about accessibility laws in education
    • Question: is there any venue for all of the W3C groups to get together and exchange ideas? We are not aware of this right now
    • Should this group attend ATIA to present or be a poster session? Who would our audience be?
    • UNESCO - topics for children and accessibility? Discussions about AI and children
    • Fatima is working with an accessibility group in Spain - this group will share with Fatima re: students who use screen readers; she will share with our group
    • Council for Exceptional Children - perhaps present as a poster session the White Paper from last year that everyone contributed to
    • Conferences to prepare in spring:

22nd Meeting (October 26, 2023)

  • Review of skills assessment for A11y4kidsdoc
    • Participants will volunteer the information
    • We will send an email to gather certification information
    • In accessibility standards, we bring in use cases for children
    • In guidelines, frameworks for children in the online world, in AI, we bring ways to implement accessibility.
    • Raise awareness on what is still missing and scalable.
  • https://www.w3.org/TR/wai-aria-1.2/#aria-current
  • Suzanne will create a draft git hub or a google doc for the group to think about values for education specifically.
  • This is to describe buttons for screenreaders. So far it has been build for an average user in any context.
    • ie.: in courses or assessments, students see Aria current=true instead of =question which is more relevant to education.
  • We already started the education output section.
  • We would not cover everything we need to add purpose, intent and end goals so that it remains specific.

23rd Meeting (November 9, 2023)

  • Education outcomes (ie.:2 pager + visual)
  • Legislative changes
    • Check on legislative progress
    • Lack of progress on accessibility in education in the US, and also lack of devices in the hands of children in some countries
    • Determining the most essential beginning skills and level of accessibility for students who only have access to devices for a small amount of time
    • Does our group have updated information about standards of accessibility in education and/or legislation?
  • Good practices in accessibility for education
    • Examples of good practices and highlighting public information that can be accessed
    • Gaps in accessibility for education
    • Some educational software is inaccessible for screen readers as an example
    • Finding educational software that is accessible and demonstrating it as working with screen readers - end of year project
  • EdTech Impact Evaluation framework - possibly adapting it for our group and accessibility
  • Trend-setting and new research
  • New Kahoot tools-Neurodiversity sparks Kahoot
  • New logo for the group

24th Meeting (December 7, 2023)

  • Informative Paper on accessibility in education https://docs.google.com/document/d/1Is8J7WxsLqhJmf0HsLznJgCscudgwD-_/edit
    • Analysis of 3 US bills/laws (accessibility in Education): Maryland, New Jersey and Illinois
    • Different focuses analyzed (public schools or/ and private), WCAG compliance, educative value, evaluation/monitoring processes
    • This group's paper is aimed to be informative, showing the different options and serve as comparison basis/mapping options
    • New laws in Oregon and Colorado and a Texas Education Agency proclamation
      • check https://tea.texas.gov/system/files/proclamation-2024_1.pdf
      • Web content in materials adopted under this proclamation must be created to conform to the WCAG 2.1 Level AA standards available at https://www.w3.org/TR/WCAG21/. Electronic materials that are not compliant with all of the WCAG 2.1, Level AA, standards and with technical standards of the Federal Rehabilitation Act, Section 508, will be removed from the adopted list and EMAT and the publisher’s contract may be presented to the SBOE for termination (TAC §66.28(a)(6)).
    • how to best include teachers, parents and caregivers
    • to add to the document: Ed codes, ed report questionnaire, next legislations
    • Second part of the document (larger scope): Impact studies and reference to inclusion + Research and Development in Ed Tech (representation)
      • considerations
        • tensions between time, resources, growing amount of applications that need to be evaluated
        • conformance needs sometimes comes from a place of distrust which is not ideal
        • Accessibility in education should be accompanied by usability, pedagogical value, different age considerations (e.g. limiting keyboard commands when needed)
        • Recommendations for WCAG 3

25th Meeting (December 21, 2023)

  • Meeting organization: proposal to take 10 minutes at the end to wrap up and check action plan.
    • See in next meetings if this works for the group.
  • New topic for 2024: safe and cognitively appropriate environments
    • How do we make sure online environments are safe and respectful for all children in terms of neurodiversity. Including mental health protection.
    • Awareness about risks (predatory scheme, vulnerable children, children who have not been informed, no ‘one size fits all’…)
    • Proposal: Certifying or labelling good practices
      • Benchmarking systems exist for children’s rights but we would need to define the kevel of protection for cognitive vulnerability.
      • Children can be empowered to protect themselves and this usually gives good results as they will ie.: share pictures only with people they know, talk to people they know, … Publication Denmark
      • Legislations help protect children like the Digital Services Act in Europe.
    • Our Accessibility for children Group can start providing use cases (begin 2024) to see how to cover remaining gaps and cognitive vulnerabilities.
    • In a second step: link with research and criteria for good practice
    • Liaise with COGA group and funding organisations
  • Our Season’s greetings will be sent end of December + posted on linked IN.

2024

First Meeting (January 18 2024)

  • Kids Across the Spectrum book study for the group
    • Resource to analyse and compare with other resources, practices, experiences.
    • Research about the view of this book from the Autism community and whether it is endorsed
    • The book has particular quotes of individuals (children and parents) from the community
    • Multiple perspectives on techno-social experiences
    • The book highlights differences between adult and children online experiences
    • Reading the book to broaden our perspectives on the topic of Safe and Cognitively Appropriate Environments
    • Author credits TILL, Inc. (Towards Indpendent Living and Learning) and the Autism Program at Boston Medical Center
      • Both organizations mention Applied Behavioral Analysis on their websites
  • Girls and accessibility from UNICEF:
  • Reviewing prioritization survey
    • https://www.w3.org/community/accessibility4children/wiki/Main_Page#2023
    • Continue work on“Ethics of Interface,” + workshop
    • WCAG 2.x gap analysis ( as a list of missing sub-success criteria) to inform WCAG 3 and/or be a temporary stand alone note until WCAG 3 addresses more of children’s needs
    • Continue to evangelize the need for special consideration for Accessibility for Children within W3C
    • Evangelize the need for special consideration for Accessibility for Children among accessibility specialists in general
    • Write a stand-alone guide to making content/products accessible for children with disabilities, similar to COGA's document
    • Design for a prototype system that would give learners both a mechanism and reinforcement for flagging unmet learning/information needs
    • Present at Conferences
    • Create a joint working subgroup of 2 community groups: Silver (which works with AGWG [accessibility guidelines working group]) and our group, to directly write content for WCAG 3
    • Research and document what AT is being used in low resource environments.
    • Create a mechanism for looping organizations like Save the Children (or alliances of such organizations) into W3C document review
    • Create a resource similar to: Older Users Section from Education and Outreach Web Accessibility Initiative
    • White paper focusing on the necessity for addressing unmet learning/information needs for the cost-optimal evolution of online resources User Participation is essential (see also: Miraculous Intersections & 3 laws of Feedback)

Second Meeting (February 1 2024)

  • Flexible agenda: Many topics on the agenda in order to pick up what attending members prefer.
  • Prioritization document: to keep in mind when we discuss topics in the meetings
    • Consider Ethical (practical aspects in context) in diverse domains we dig into
    • Liaise with COGA taskforce, WAI Adapt, Education and Outreach
  • Discussion on assessments: accuracy and accountability
    • Accessible implementation of assessments: fairness, empowering students; extra time accommodation is not enough or not always what the student needs, formative evaluations helping inclusivity.
  • Cognitive vulnerabilities
    • Dark Patterns
      • Dark patterns:' deceptive designs exploiting the vulnerability of children, who lack the full cognitive abilities to discern or resist such manipulations.’ Protecting Children from Dark Patterns and Deceptive Design (article selected to have definition)
      • Examples: exploiting vulnerabilities to buy goods, exploiting fear of missing out, shaming, increasing the possibilities to accidentally click,...
      • User case: Earth science project
      • Where do students find scientific, safe and verified information?
        • Cross check verified websites .edu, .org, National geographic?
        • What about the safety of the content?
        • What about the interface?
        • Could safety be made visible by a symbol, label covering different aspects (safety, content, self certified, appropriate learning activities for developmental stage, cognitive load, misinformation, reading level, design...)
        • Possible example (but structure should be clearer) Teachers pay teachers
        • Agency: Empower children to tag and rank
        • Provide opportunities for metacognitive awareness.
      • New legislations to protect children internationally but very difficult to understand and identify dark patterns in sociotechnical systems (AI).
      • Children with disabilities are more at risk.
      • Ethical measures and risk mitigations should protect them.
  • Discussion of producing Myths and Facts of Accessibility for Children similar in format to Department of Education Myths and Facts about Assistive Technology

Third Meeting (February 29 2024)

  • Ethical AI for accessibility:
    • Potential for AI to create equalizing conditions and accessibility for all
      • Every child could have Protective AI (privacy, anti-spam, neutralizing dark patterns, …)
    • Generative AI tools are still difficult to rely on
      • When asked about accessible code: tetralogical blog
      • Automated improvement of the accessibility of a site (with the use of Artificial intelligence) should also be used with caution and need manual intervention
    • In education: Magic School https://www.magicschool.ai is a community and resources site for teachers students
      • they also have use cases for special education teachers
      • Diagnostic assessment generator you can choose the grade level, ask what should be assessed, teachers can choose the number of questions and the answers and get keys in the answers
      • Text leveler tool: teachers can introduce a book chapter and get an adapted version for an adapted grade.
      • Assignment scaffolder breaks down materials for group work etc
      • Accommodations suggestions. The video proposes the instructor introduces types of behaviors or difficulties in a prompt and gets suggestions or activities for accommodations to use in the classroom
      • The site has the limitations of generative AI (data until 2021), no internet access, and has a disclaimer it might occasionally produce biased or inaccurate information
      • Discussion about sustainability, accuracy, input from teachers
  • Myths and facts new format for our work (bite size)
  • Disclaimer for external presentations or book reviews, literature studies. When content is discussed in the group, it does not mean our accessibility for children Community group endorses all content. We can agree with parts of content, not all agree

Fourth Meeting (March 14 2024)

  • EU new Brochure on Digital services act Privacy, Safety & Security for Minors: Brochure on the EU legislation (digital services Act) by 5 rights Foundation and how it can help protect children by observing main standards like:
    • data minimization,
    • high privacy default settings,
    • terms and conditions that are easy to find age appropriate and in a language children should understand,
    • profiling, geolocation, microphone and camera should be off by default
    • dark patterns are banned
      • definitions of dark patterns: “Practices that materially distort or impair, either on purpose or in effect, the ability of recipients of the service to make autonomous and informed choices or decisions or which can be used to persuade the recipients of the service to engage in unwanted behaviours or into undesired decisions which have negative consequences for them”
  • Inclusive ed tech working group
    • This working group is international and members present think the topic is too generic (all reading) to join.
    • We are open to discuss this in next meetings if there is specific interest for participation.
  • Able Gamers: Interesting presentation with statistics on disabled gamers and different reasons for gaming also debunking some myths. Universal design good practices: gamers presentation
  • Myths and facts about accessibility for children
    • Aim of this page : help support accessibility for children
    • It is meant for broad dissemination but we might select the highest priorities in a ‘lighter’ version if needed.
    • New myths and facts added for this meeting:
      • Myth: Communities provide accessibility for children solely to benefit the individuals with specific needs.
      • Fact: Accessibility for children is essential for building strong 21st century communities. (Could add statistics about aging population, AI and automation.) Maximizing all student’s abilities.Asistive technologies help national security and success. Given the aging population, having young people empowered and contributing is beneficial for all.
      • Myth: A system relying increasingly on charity to support children with specific needs in schools is the way forward
      • Fact: while charity might help, it is often a temporary situation and not a structural response. Accommodations or adjustments are a right, legally binding. Solutions should also be scalable. Children should be supported and empowered to be assertive about their needs and strengths and in a charity system, there is always the risk that the person helping is compensating for these skills if not trained to do so gradually.
      • Myth: Assistance is steady and the scope and roadmap can be defined easily
      • Fact: A child has evolving capacities, needs to be empowered, children with specific needs often have learning curves with hiccups or breaks and then sudden catch ups.Assistive aid should be balanced, flexible.
      • Myth: Artificial Intelligence can solve many problems and replace people
      • Fact: In many legislations there is always a human in command needed and although we see some successful stories of personal training and assistive technology, AI can help support teachers and educators. ie.:
        • AI can help if experts prepare pattern libraries for support (math exercises) and check the results.
        • AI can help teachers brainstorm on alternative activities for the classroom: peer support, reading aloud, level reading, most relevant text to speech tools to use,…
      • Myth: Artificial Intelligence cannot be used at all because we need learning goals and meta cognition to be at the center of teaching and learning
      • Fact: Understanding and application of the learning goals are skills students gradually acquire. These skills require explicit teaching or transparency. Many legislations around the world require AI systems to be transparent (especially when having an impact on children and evaluating learning outcomes- EU Artificial intelligence Act EU Artificial intelligence Act Transparency and Explainability requirements used in AI standards and legislations can be transposed to the educational requirements (learning goals, pedagogic intent, metacognition of learning goals and steps,...) in order to empower teachers and learners. Accessibility code is not effective when the data used to create the code with AI is too broad. It is important to refine the sources. Teachers and experts can help select the data, limit the dataset to draw from. this can also be relevant for activities. Teachers can limit the dataset to create adapted activities to qualitative sources. Experts are also needed to make sure the model is still fine. To avoid degradation.

Fifth Meeting (March 28 2024)

  • Initiative of W3C - managing the impact of AI and machine learning on the web
    • Ethical consideration of AI and machine learning on the web within accessibility for children
    • Will review as a group to gather the main points
  • Introducing Rhonda Weiss Center and their objectives
  • W3C considering opening a new community group as Education and Outreach has folded
  • Review myths and facts document
    • Another possible myth- AI can solve a lot of problems with accessibility
      • AI could address multiple priorities
      • Where could AI be helpful for children and accessibility?
      • Showing examples of alt text that AI would write versus what a person would write or edit
      • What are the ways that AI is most frequently being used for in accessibility for children right now?
      • What works best in the context of AI being used?
      • Privacy considerations will make it limited to be able to use data for AI to customize based on school/IDEA data that the Weiss Center is collecting - re disability labels, modifications, accommodations - FERPA would prevent this as it would cause students to be identifiable
  • New data visualization tool coming from National Science Foundation
    • Open source to start
    • Another one - SCASS=State Collaborative on Assessment and Student Standards
  • Conference - National Council on Measurement in Education for classroom assessment - in September
  • Accessible gamers - teachers need training on using these with students
  • Adults vs kids - aging population groups in W3C - are there overlaps with considerations for children?
    • With AI - key elements are relevant for consideration with AI and children
    • Safety, empowerment, developmental, cognitive limitations, freedom of choice - cannot give the same choices for adults as we do for children

Sixth Meeting (April 11 2024)

  • FB for W3C initiative:impact of Machine Learning on the web: Draft comment for our group to review and/or myths and facts document
  • Age assurances: not knowing what age the use is online and that children can go onto any website - self confirmation is easily circumvented - more objective methods that are harder to pass than self confirmation
    • Example- social media platforms, right now it is a combination of methods to protect children
    • Also trying to think through different scenarios of children in the home of foster parents, or trying to determine who the parental authority is in other situations
  • Presentation at Texas Technology Access Program - returning to the group re: ideas for presentation about prioritizing purchasing accessible digital materials
    • Is prioritizing accessibility in assessments a solvable problem, and are we making progress?
    • Internally, if district has other needs regarding linking with the curriculum, what are the needs for purchasing the digital materials, complying with the laws- what are the elements to take into account
    • Making connection with individuals across the district, trying to eliminate silos
  • Managing the impact of AI and Maching Learning on the Web
    • Adding accessibility to this article, deadline June
    • Will we be able to add something about children and accessibility to this topic?
    • General comment on children’s rights in relation to the digital environment - UNESCO
    • Privacy issues; children with disabilities are often “invisible” users on the web
    • AI & the Web: Understanding and managing the impact of Machine Learning models on the Web
      • Revision and structure
      • Risks to children with disabilities can be very different typically developing children
    • Members are welcome to review the article and and provide feedback
  • CAST UDL Guidelines 3.0
    • Needs to include accessibility explicitly
    • UDL can be a basis for tools of inclusivity and opportunities for thought
    • Assessments are left out of UDL 3.0
    • UDL has a foundation of accessibility and so it must be included in those guidelines

Seventh Meeting (April 252024)

1. everyday life, play and learning. 2. Social relationships 3. development and well-being 4. Privacy and other rights

    • The report also mentions that “children should not simply be protected but also empowered in their interactions with AI.
    • Less attention has been paid, however, to practical strategies for involving children in technology development.”
    • Hands-on activities are suggested at the end of the report.
    • Our group on accessibility for children found the report very interesting as a state-of-the-art analysis and recommendations. **The activities at the end, however, would need some accessibility adaptations before being able to really empower children with specific needs to participate to their full potential.
  • Myths and facts on accessibility for children:

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1-BSe5C442nuuEdvfHOFS_s0J6_n3kTeH-gCImW2jfik/edit?usp=sharing

    • Myth: We need to have a minimum threshold or census statistics for a disability to be represented in assessments/education material development
    • Fact Lowering the threshold would help include students using sign language and promote true inclusiveness through edge cases and make the models more relevant for pupils and schools
    • Myth: Teachers, designers, and engineers can collaborate easily on projects with a common goal as their roles do not overlap
    • Fact: While it is very good practice to have different professionals work together to avoid silos or design flaws, they might need translation as they are trained differently and might have completely different worldviews. Some of their “work bubbles” might not be obvious to them as they have not worked in different environments. .i.e.: schools have a hierarchical structure.
    • Myth: Procurement for accessibility materials is easy and harmonized
    • Fact: ADA and web accessibility regulations help regulate and give clear indications on what to purchase but evaluations have to be done by school districts and this requires upskilling, extra resources and provisions.
    • Myth: Rural areas and low resource environments have limited and no internet access and can’t participate into the innovative debates and be included in Artificial Intelligence.
    • Fact: Everyone needs to be included in the debate and participate. We need to develop grants tools and initiatives that work in all environments. i.e.: Civics innovation hubs (ethical debates) https://app.guestoo.de/public/event/f621d24d-ba07-4920-b06e-5aaa340d2686
    • “Projects should be startups in the sphere of civic education that focus on strengthening democratic competencies that promote participation, cohesion, and resilience. Project ideas can range from workshops, cultural interventions, eyewitness talks, exhibitions, scientific studies, scenario methods, to apps, or augmented reality storyboards.”
    • “Projects should relate to the topic of ethical and human-rights considerations related to artificial intelligence.”
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