DescribedAt for ARIA 1.1

Colleagues:

This email is intended to summarize various conversations regarding
ARIA-DescribedAt previously conducted by email but not always archived
at W3C. As the PFWG has commited to develop ARIA 1.1 in public view, I
am taking this opportunity to summarize the consensus that I believe is
emerging regarding ARIA-DescribedAt here for the publically viewable record.

I am also requesting that continuing discussion of ARIA-DescribedAt
proceed on this public list. Individuals copied on this email should
Reply to All when responding, as posts to public-pfwg@w3.org are still
member restricted, even though the archive is publically viewable. We
can thus take care to forward all substantive responses through to the
list for those persons not subscribed to it.

The regularly scheduled ARIA Task Force teleconference on Monday 15 July
appears to have reached general  consensus for publishing a First Public
Working Draft (FPWD) specification for ARIA-DescribedAt in the September
timeframe. We have prioritized this timeframe and this particular ARIA
1.1 focus in order to support requirements from DAISY and IDPF for their
epub specification work in ISO.

While the 15 July ARIA teleconference revisited many now familiar
objections and concerns, we do seem to have agreed on an architectural
approach that appears to have satisfied participants for both short and
long term objectives. The (member confidential) teleconference minutes
are available at:

https://www.w3.org/2013/07/15-pf-minutes.html

The agreed approach would provide an ARIA-1.1 DescribedAt attribute
supporting a single URI and usable on multiple elements, much like
DAISY3's prodnote. We believe this meets DAISY's and IDPF's immediate
need.

We also agreed to continue DescribedAt development into the ARIA-2.0
timeframe in order to develop more advanced functionality that might
involve content negotiation based on metadata (e.g. Access for All). We
expect this would involve other W3C specifications, such as IndieUI.

So, simple URI support this September, and more advanced IDref-based
functionality emerging in ARIA 2.0.

I'll stop here and ask Rich to provide more technical detail by way of
summarizing technical discussion to date, and setting the context for resolving any
remaining questions and concerns.

Janina

-- 

Janina Sajka,	Phone:	+1.443.300.2200
			sip:janina@asterisk.rednote.net
		Email:	janina@rednote.net

Linux Foundation Fellow
Executive Chair, Accessibility Workgroup:	http://a11y.org

The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI)
Chair,	Protocols & Formats	http://www.w3.org/wai/pf
	Indie UI			http://www.w3.org/WAI/IndieUI/

Received on Tuesday, 30 July 2013 19:07:32 UTC