Web standards, Openness and Transparency

Hi, folks–

On 8/7/14 10:01 AM, Marcos Caceres wrote:
> Hi Steve, Please forgive my ignorance below, the following are all
> dumb questions but I'm trying to get some actionable items from the
> discussion - I've never really participated in the HTML WG or Acc
> WGs, so I don't know how things work there or what their process is.
> I want to understand what is at the core of the problems you mention
> and really need your guidance with that.
>
> On August 7, 2014 at 5:08:17 AM, Steve Faulknerwrote:
>>
>> Instead of being silo-ed acc minded people be involved directly in
>> working groups creating standards, being part of the development
>> cycle, rather than at the end.
>
> Why has this not happened in practice? What is preventing people from
> participating directly? Who are what is forcing a silo and why is it
> only happening at the end of development? This all seems really bad,
> obviously.

There's nothing stopping this from a process or functional perspective; 
I think it's mostly a cultural thing. All of my working groups would 
welcome an accessibility expert, either from one of our members, or an 
Invited Expert (and as staff contact, I try to make accessibility 
experts feel welcome).

In fact, there are some W3C members that specialize in accessibility 
consulting who participate in WGs: for example Deque Systems has 6 
participants in 7 groups (mostly WAI WGs), and The Paciello Group has 9 
participants in 18 groups, including HTML, CSS, WebApps, Pointer Events; 
both are in the Indie UI WG, which is working on something technical 
that goes beyond accessibility. Some companies, like IBM, have broader 
interests, but also have accessibility experts; for example, Rich 
Schwerdtfeger (IBM) had been more active in PFWG, but last year, he 
joined the SVG WG and has been an active telcon participant and editor, 
which has worked out well.


Part of the challenge is that most of the time, most WGs aren't talking 
about issues specific to accessibility, so an accessibility-specific 
participant would have to sit through telcons and wade through emails 
and specs looking for topics that need an accessibility viewpoint; there 
are a lot of things that aren't related directly to accessibility, but 
which an expert knows have an accessibility component or aspect, either 
a potential problem or a potential underdeveloped benefit; the average 
WG participant doesn't know enough about accessibility to identify those 
issues, to help the accessibility expert, or to cluster telcons around 
those issues. So, this is very time-consuming for an accessibility 
expert, unless they are also generally interested in the topic.

Obviously, the more technically inclined the accessibility expert, the 
better it is for the WG; many accessibility experts are intimately 
familiar with assistive technology (screenreaders, etc.), and are very 
good at documenting use cases and requirements, but may not be as 
familiar with designing spec features.

So, it's partly about education: educating the average WG participant in 
accessibility; and educating accessibility experts in deep technical topics.


>> Less process based and control based work mode.
>
> What process is in place that is most restrictive right now? How is
> it restricting what you do and when?
>
>> Less dictatorial leadership dressed up as consensus.
>
> Any ideas of how we can overcome this? Should there be a more
> explicit choice made by groups about how they operate, like:
>
> 1. "Consensus is running code."
> 2. "Consensus for this group is reached by X", where X is a vote
> or something.
> 3. Or "This group gives the Editor final say."
>
> Etc.

I suspect all of this stuff is going to vary from group to group. Unless 
I'm misunderstanding Steve, he's not saying this is a general 
characteristic of W3C, but rather how some groups or task forces operate.

I think it's appropriate for this Community Group to openly talk about 
such things, even if they don't apply to the W3C as a whole; I'm just 
setting scope to these particular comments.

Regards-
-Doug

Received on Friday, 8 August 2014 21:01:15 UTC