[text] minutes: Text Alternatives Sub-Group Teleconference 2011-05-02 [draft]

aloha!

big thanks to RichS for performing the vast bulk of the scribing and
to all those who spelled Rich whilst he spoke...

minutes from the 2 May 2011 Alternatives Sub-Group Teleconference can
be accessed as hypertext from:

http://www.w3.org/2011/05/02-text-minutes.html

as an IRC log at:

http://www.w3.org/2011/05/02-text-irc

and as plain text following this announcement -- please log any 
errors, omissions, mis-attributions, clarifications, etc. by 
replying-to this announcement on-list...

thanks, too, to Leonie, who volunteered to scribe at the 9 May
2011 Textg Alternatives Sub-Group Teleconference...

please note that the following resolutions were logged at the 
2011-05-02 telecon:

  Resolution: no objection to doing a mix of clarification and new
  information

  Resolution: no objection to having a one step process that include a
  clariification plus change proposal together

    _________________________________________________________

                             - DRAFT -

        HTML A11Y Text Alternatives Sub-Group Teleconference

02 May 2011

Agenda
http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-html-a11y/2011Apr/0424.html

  See also: IRC log - http://www.w3.org/2011/05/02-text-irc

Attendees

  Present
         Cynthia_Shelly, Geoff, Gregory_Rosmaita, John_Foliot, Judy,
         Laura_Carlson, Leonie_Watson, Michael_Cooper, Rich, Stevef,
         janina

  Regrets
         Lynn_Holdsworth, Marco_Ranon

  Chair
         judy_brewer

  Scribe
         rich_schwerdtfeger, Rich

Contents

    * Topics
        1. Action Item Review
        2. Clarification mail on summary
        3. Action item figcaption and the alt discussion
        4. role="presentation" rich and Steve
        5. Change Proposal Alt text
        6. Reminder of change proposal format
          
http://dev.w3.org/html5/decision-policy/decision-policy.html#change-proposal
        7. Nearing consensus on updated clarification on alt
           validation? If not what else needed?
          
http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-html-a11y/2011Apr/0423.html
        8. Are we reaching concensus on alt validation?
    * Summary of Action Items
    _________________________________________________________

  <judy> scribe: rich_schwerdtfeger

  <richardschwerdtfe> scribe: Rich

  <oedipus> scribenick: rechardschwerdtfe

  <oedipus> scribenick: richardschwerdtfe

  http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-html-a11y/2011Apr/0424.html

  <judy>
  http://www.w3.org/2011/04/25-text-minutes.html#ActionSummary

Action Item Review

  judy: this is the action item collection from last week

  <oedipus> http://www.w3.org/WAI/PF/HTML/track/products/5

Clarification mail on summary

  <oedipus> Text "product" Tracker:
  http://www.w3.org/WAI/PF/HTML/track/products/5

  judy: janina, would you be available to meet with me to discuss the
  call

  janina: yes, later today

  judy: gregory is working on a draft
  ... judy and shawn are working on a poster
  ... John, do you have a draft ready

  <oedipus> http://www.w3.org/WAI/PF/HTML/track/actions/124

  JF: on my things to do this week Judy

  judy: we can take the table summary first

  <oedipus> @summary draft action item:
  http://www.w3.org/WAI/PF/HTML/track/actions/125

  <oedipus> figcaption and @alt:
  http://www.w3.org/WAI/PF/HTML/track/actions/121

Action item figcaption and the alt discussion

  judy: I updated the section on figcaption

  <oedipus> updated figcaption and alt post (judy)
  http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-html-a11y/2011Apr/0423.html

  judy: I think that action item is done.

  <oedipus> role presentation action item (rich and steve)
  http://www.w3.org/WAI/PF/HTML/track/actions/122

role="presentation" rich and Steve

  RS: posted text to list -- read all of maciej's review

  RS: not brought up was native host lang semantics for HTML5 @alt 
  how impacts a11y api mapping -- if not identical, problemmatic

  RS: issue from chairs' review -- was not made clear that reason 
  need to use iinterchangeably (diff from html4) -- alt="" is 
  equivalent of role="presentation"

  <Stevef>
  http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-html-a11y/2011May/0008.html

  RS: host language defines a11y api mapping -- didn't specifically 
  say in HTML4 that image object is removed from a11y API tree

  CS: point of contention -- IE doesn't do that and doesn't think it 
  should

  <janina> Rich's post is at:
  http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-html-a11y/2011May/0008.html

Change Proposal Alt text

  judy: this is an email from Sam
  ... on Friday Paul Cotton sent an email asking what we are trying to
  do?

  <oedipus> paulc query:
  http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-html-a11y/2011Apr/0415.html

  judy: We are preparing an email and depending on the response to
  those we will create a formal objection with expedited appeals
  ... I prefer we coordinate together on this
  ... Sam replied, in the shared interest of expediency and you are
  creating clarification please produce a change proposal at the same
  time.
  ... this will save us some time
  ... Sam then sent another mail saying that he would also recommend
  that instead of calling our responses clarification emails then we
  would be stating we are bringing new information
  ... Janina and I also mentioned our reply to Paul that we were
  hoping to work with the chairs on this.
  ... Are there questions so far on this?

  <oedipus> SamRuby: "To help speed things up, the response
  undoubtedly would be that all requests to reopen an issue need to be
  accompanied by a change proposal:
  http://www.w3.org/Bugs/Public/show_bug.cgi?id=11447#c3" from
  http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-html-a11y/2011Apr/0421.html

  judy: he was saying that if you do go the new information route
  explain that it is new information.
  ... any questions?

  janina: you can't just say they did not have all the facts
  ... they did not make the correct decision based on the facts they
  had

  cynthia: that is an argument you can't win whether you are right or
  not
  ... there was a point where Paul was a bit surprised

  <oedipus> RS: function of title and alt text being different? that
  was what paul identified as "new information"

  rich: yes that is the difference between alt and title

  judy: it did not occur to us that those making the decision were
  aware of the fundamental differences between alt and title
  ... is it ok if we have a mix of clarification and new information?

  <oedipus> JF: what may be clarification for us is new info for
  others

  john: ok.

  Resolution: no objection to doing a mix of clarification and new
  information

Reminder of change proposal format
http://dev.w3.org/html5/decision-policy/decision-policy.html#change-proposal

  scribe; rich

  Judy: i think we can deal with each of these items briefly
  ... there are 4 sub bullets that can be applied without ambiguity
  ... I am assuming that we would be doing either the first or the
  third bullet
  ... we need to make the chairs' lives simple
  ... any additional thoughts or concerns?
  ... some of these are not ready
  ... we have a suggestion from Sam on the list that we add change
  proposals to clarify what we are saying in our clarification emails.
  ... any objections to doing that in a one step process?

  jf: I do have a question about alt text. I don't know if it makes
  sense to disambiguate that.

  judy: that is agenda item 5
  ... agenda item 5 has to do with some of our clarification mails to
  proceed at different paces.
  ... we have different shared rationals

  <oedipus> plus 1 to saving time

  judy: for the clarification mails that are ready any objection to
  doing this as a one step process: (clarification plus change
  proposals)

  Resolution: no objection to having a one step process that include a
  clariification plus change proposal together

Nearing consensus on updated clarification on alt validation? If not
what else needed?
http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-html-a11y/2011Apr/0423.html

Are we reaching concensus on alt validation?

  judy: I think that we may have some hefty topics to discuss among
  those.
  ... there are notes that have not been rolled into this yet. I
  suggest we walk through it section by section. There are 4 sections
  of the 6 subdecisions on this.
  ... we only have issues with 4 or less of the decisions
  ... let's walk through these one by one
  ... The first piece of this is on role="presentation" does not make
  missing alt conforming.
  ... there was replaced email on this
  ... there were questions that leif asked
  ... if you look at this section of the text, there was an initial
  block of text that was representative of text between rich and john
  and there was a comment from Leif

  john: I think it was more rich and steve were working on this

  judy: we have a short window on this

  <inserted> scribenick: oedipus

  JB: may have short window -- don't want to let questions linger

  RS: talked to SteveF about this -- what hadn't looked at was the
  a11y api mappings are such that if have alt="" equal semantics for
  role="presentation" -- in ARIA removes object from API tree --
  thought same for alt="", but now Cyns says microsoft has problem
  with that

  CS: general discomfort with removing things from tree

  SF: doesn't remove anything from tree if role="presentation"

  RS: what do with layout tables? mark with role="presentation"?

  SF: not surprised that alt="" is not removed from A11y tree -- in
  WAI-ARIA does remove stuff from tree when marked role="presentation"

  CS: MS never thought removing from tree a good idea
  ... not 100% positive -- will check

  RS: exception in IE news to me

  SF: role="presentation" on image removes img from a11y tree
  ... does alt="" remove from a11y tree -- i would say "no" -- hasn't
  been implemented yet

  JF: why does MS consider this a bad idea?

  CS: removing things from tree that complicates things in variety of
  scenarios

  JB: may be something need to deal with anyway
  ... focus on what we want to say -- clarification or new info?

  SF: can confirm that role="presentation" to img element removes from
  a11y tree

  JS: what about legacy viewing HTML5 page?

  SF: if UA HTML5-compatible, won't be in a11y tree

  JF: what happens if img src="foo.jpg" role="presentation" what
  happens in IE8?

  JS: IE6?

  CS: IE8 supports aria -- IE6 doesn't -- get image with src and no
  alt -- if AT goes through DOM, AT can grab role="presentation" if
  use DOM-aware AT

  SF: for UAs that don't support ARIA would be ignore alt=""

  JF: if image used inside link, not going to have role=presentation

  SF: right -- no downside then for older UAs if AT uses hueristics to
  filter out images without alt
  ... if no alt attribute, will ignore unless user sets to read all
  images

  CS: role="presentation" not there for older UAs

  JS: strenghtens our argument
  ... alt="" redundant and unnecessary

  CS: MS says "use both"

  SF: main argument against role=presentation is in GUI UAs do
  something different if alt="" and IMG without alt text

  <JF> +q

  SF: alt="" is a flag to some UAs to render image differently than
  when there is no alt text provided by author

  JB: like to move towards action item to get this written up

  CS: is it really so terrible to require both alt="" and
  role="presentation"

  JF: implementation issue with browsers according to SF -- their
  problem, not ours

  SF: our problems are their problems -- assuming that ARIA should not
  affect layering violations -- don't want to use ARIA to fix for
  non-api a11y stuff

  <judy> [judy suggests that we present the browser implementation
  issues/differences as new information, within our clarification]

  <Leonie_Watson> JB: Would someone who has been following this
  discussion be willing to write this up?

  <inserted> scribenick: JF

  RS: not aware that browser vendors do not want to provide
  accommodation to aria for renedering

  <Leonie_Watson> /me No problem. Over to John...

  SF: some browsers will render the lack of image different

  if uses alt="" won't show anuy image at all, if they omit then
  browser shows that an image would exist

  this is how the browsers do things - alt="" is a flag to make image
  visible or not visible

  theydon't want to make role=presentation equal the same as ""

  SF don't want to base grafical rendering on ARIA Roles

  SF: it goes back to the layering issue

  they don't want ARIA to use affect anything but a11y APIs

  <janina> "layering violation" is a fancy term for "not invented
  here"

  RS: to be honest, we didn't have these concepts 10 yrs ago, so using
  alt="" was the best we had then

  this is no longer a valid justification: ARIA has a section in HTML5

  JB: we have a lot to still cover - can we move this to the list?

  RS: there is a F2F this week

  JB: cyns and rich to continue discussing

  <Stevef> text of decision for role=presentation
 
http://www.paciellogroup.com/blog/2011/04/html5-accessibility-chops-the-alt-decision/#d2

  <judy> We need to recheck this mail
  http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-html/2011Apr/0451.html 
  within this section == Should it be permitted to omit alt when
  role=presentation is specified? ==

  JB: need to revies maciej 's note

  are there other issues that need to be discussed

  <Stevef>
 
http://www.paciellogroup.com/blog/2011/04/html5-accessibility-chops-the-alt-decision/#d2

  SF: point out that reformatted decision as html rich as blog post

  <judy> [judy thanks steve and asks if Rich and Cynthia please focus
  their attention on Steve's text rather than my mail]

  JB: asks that rich and cyns look at Steve's text when discussing
  this iissue
  ... 1 more question on role="presentation"

  if by next monday we get more clarification and consensus, what
  about the next steps towards Change proposal?

  one item is actual spec text

  how hard would that be?

  SF: good question - for the @title issue it was pretty
  straightforward

  JB: so for @ title it would only take a few hours to write?

  SF: yes

  JB: for the role="pres" is there anyone else who could take this as
  a work item?
  ... could SF take this on as well?

  SF: yes

  +q

  CS: Did we take the time to decide if any of these are worth not
  fighting for?

  JB: yes, we did, and are taking this on 2 levels

  we looked at the initial 6

  we believe that this was one that was significant to address

  it may not require a 'fight' but rather clarrification

  figcaption might be more significant

  <oedipus> scribenick: oedipus

  JB: want to review next section of draft text from Judy

  <judy>
  http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-html-a11y/2011Apr/0423.html

  JB: straw proposal to get a lot of discussion going

  <richardschwerdtfe> scribe: rich

  JB: second section to consider is meta name="generator"

  <judy> look for == On the Co-Chairs' decision on meta name=generator
  ==

  <inserted> scribenick: richardschwerdtfe

  judy: on the second section on meta generator
  ... there has been updated text from Leif who was going to try and
  join today
  ... there was a bunch more discussion
  ... could anyone describe where we are on that

  JF: I have got slammed last week. there has been discussion but no
  meeting of minds
  ... if I am to understand gregory's point

  judy: my core question is how essential is the core issue that leif
  and benjamin are generating

  <JF> +1 to SF

  steve: I had not looked at the generator question much

  steve; this generator flag is a flag that is used by just under a
  third of web content and it is not used for that purpose. Unless
  they get rid of the flag. ...

  <oedipus> <meta generator="Gregory J. Rosmaita" ...>

  jf: to do this it shuts up the validators

  steve: they are using this flag that up to now it shuts up the
  generators for alt
  ... nobody bought into that
  ... we are talking about millions of pages

  cynthia: if they want a magic token they should make a new one

  judy: it does not weaken our interest in restoring this

  steve: it may be unlikely that they are going to take it away
  altogether

  <janina> +1

  <Laura> hi

  steve: software has to opt in to this. Why would you have a general
  meta flag rather than stating you just don't want to validate alt?
  ... this is the only flag that stops validation

  judy: on this issue of the meta generator how do we zero in on a
  solution for this?
  ... is this something that if you chat with Leif you could zero in
  on the issue

  <JF> +Q

  judy: we don't want to boil the ocean

  steve: to me these are valid arguments for what is there being
  tossed out
  ... John would be a better person to conduct it with

  janina: it seems to me that our issue is that we don't provide a
  correct alt on images
  ... it is being treated as a get out of jail free card

  <Leonie_Watson> +1 to Janina

  <oedipus> plus 1 to JS

  john: I will spend some time this week. The text Leif has been put
  together .... it has become verbose
  ... I will work with Leif to bring this to s discussion page that we
  can work off of
  ... you are not in that face to face next week. This has to do with
  I am not in PF yet
  ... I will meet janina at the airport tomorrow

  cynthia: there are 2 scenarios. email and ...

  <oedipus> limitations of tools should NOT shape HTML5

  <JF> +Q

  cynthia: I don't see the need to validate email

  judy: there is a use case coming

  rich: the use case is coming

  <oedipus> private verus public email -- can ascertain use case for
  public email (emessages from gov't, orgs, businesses)

  cynthia: it is a design tool discussion. you don't put prompts in
  peoples' faces
  ... WYSIWYG tools is the next piece of accessibility work

  judy: Cynthia can you keep watching the dialog on this?

  <judy> [judy suggests capturing and parking these issues somewhere.
  any good somewhere to capture and park them?]

  JF: I just want to add Cynthia that the meta generator will have the
  unintended result of not being able to use the validation tools

  judy: I want to move to another issue

  cynthia: who is working on meta generator and when are they talking?

  <judy> We need to recheck this mail
  http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-html-a11y/2011Apr/0423.html 
  within this section == On the Co-Chair's decision on the presence of 
  figcaption ==

  judy: I am pasting in the next place to look at

  <judy> look again please at l
  http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-html-a11y/2011Apr/0423.html 
  within this section == On the Co-Chair's decision on the presence of 
  figcaption ==

  judy: in the absence of protests we may be heading in the right
  direction
  ... I think this one maps against an issue regarding support for
  native accessibility or legacy issues
  ... my discussions with people is that their is not a clear position
  on the task force
  ... Cynthia, is this a new topic?

  cynthia: yes

  Stevef: extensive meetings with the waicg, where figcaption is an
  exception for the case where we agreed you could have a figcaption
  without an alt

  janina: I don't see figcaption in that document we produced.

  judy: I recall the legend stuff. In preparation for my response
  where figcaption is extremely different from an alt.

  <oedipus> note: old HTML5 verbiage LEGEND is now HTML5 FIGCAPTION

  <judy> [steve clarifies that figcaption was called figlegend at that
  time]

  Stevef: there are many circumstances where you have a graph or a
  chart where you provide the text alternative. you want to identify
  there is an image there

  <Laura> have to drop off now

  Stevef: if you provide the text alternative outside the alt you
  supply the alt for the label

  judy: I do recall the discussion about legends
  ... I suggest we take this off line
  ... let's see if we get some agreement.
  ... on the appropriateness question that is one issue.
  ... the legacy issue would factor into this as well

  <oedipus> example of CAPTION versus ALT versus LONGDESC:
 
http://www.w3.org/html/wg/wiki/LongdescRetention#Gregory_J._Rosmaita.27s_Original_Rationale_for_Retention

  cynthia: some of the legacy issues are better handled in HTML 5

  judy: what I would like to do is figure out the remaining status on
  each section
  ... would you be able to do a joint update on the table summary?

  gregory: yes

  <Laura> Issue 30 Change Proposal: Include longdesc in HTML5:
  http://www.w3.org/html/wg/wiki/ChangeProposals/InstateLongdesc

  judy: john update on table summary?

  JF: yes

  judy: the question of splitting out these mails, they may be better
  handled discretely

  <oedipus> stevef, prose comparing longdesc and alt with
  caption/figcaption available at
 
http://www.w3.org/html/wg/wiki/LongdescRetention#Gregory_J._Rosmaita.27s_Original_Rationale_for_Retention

  <JF> +1 to split out

  judy: do people have problem splitting these up and taking them on

  <oedipus> plus 1 to split

  <Leonie_Watson> +1 to splitting

  r

  <Laura> bye

  Resolution: No objection to splitting

  Judy: we need to get the essential issues left
  ... the question of where the normative alt guidance suggests?

  <Leonie_Watson> /me I'll scribe, with the caveat I may be a little
  late next week.

  <oedipus> JB: scribe next week (May 9) leonie watson -- if late, GJR
  will scribe until LW ready

Summary of Action Items

  [End of minutes]
    _________________________________________________________