raw minutes from 19 march 2001 AU telecon

Authoring Tools Teleconference March 19, 2001
// next meeting Monday, March 26, 2001 at 12pm U.S. EST //

==========
ATTENDANCE
==========
Present
  William Loughborough (WL)
  Charles McCathieNevile (CMN)
  Graham Oliver (GO)
  Gregory J. Rosmaita (GJR, scribe)
  Jutta Treviranus (JT, chair)
(Involuntary) Regrets
  Jan Richards (JR)
  Heather Swayne (HS)

=======================
SUMMARY OF ACTION ITEMS
=======================
1. CMN: ensure that the new bridge is functioning correctly

2. GO: send copy of article on producing accessible sites
with Domino to AU mailing list

3. CMN: email GO with information about performing
evaluation and form it should take

4. GO: evaluate Lotus Notes/Domino against ATAG 1.0

5. JT: post a "speak now or forever hold your peace" post to
the AU list alerting WG members that, effective Monday,
March 26, 2001, telecons will be for an hour only, from noon
until 1pm EST

=======
MINUTES
=======

// JT, GJR, and CMN had difficulty getting onto the bridge--
JR and HS could not get on at all //

// CMN attempts to get Graham on the call //
// CMN rejoins with Graham Oliver (GO) //

// action CMN: ensure that the new bridge is functioning
correctly //
// JT sends email to the AU list asking WG members to keep
attempting to connect to the bridge //

CMN: new techniques draft ready--still a rough draft,
includes icons and such; links to sources page; integrates
evaluation stuff into main body of the Techniques document

JT: why did you integrate the eval stuff?

CMN: actually, I just dropped it in in 2 large chunks, so as
to provide WG members an opportunity to re-review the
document and figure out where the evaluation stuff belongs

JT: ok, that makes sense!  CMN, would you please introduce
our guest

CMN: sure--I invited Graham Oliver, a web site designer,
constructor, and maintainer to talk to us about his
experiences with Lotus Notes and Domino, and because he's
what GJR calls "the WAI incarnate"--someone who, when he
became aware of accessibility issues, didn't just say "well,
I'm glad someone's doing something about it!", but, rather,
began learning all he could about accessible authoring and
has become quite an advocate of accessible design--there,
Graham, the floor's yours...

GO: currently, I'm just sitting on a veranda in the
beautiful New Zealand sunshine with my notes, ATAG, and the
Techniques document in hand; the bigger picture is that I'm
setting up company to build, design, and test accessible web
sites; recruiting 4 PWDs to be testers for company; NZ based
company; been involved with Lotus Notes & Domino for 4 or 5
years, last 3 specifically on web development using Lotus
Notes & Domino; based in NZ, works for self; got involved in
accessibility 9 months ago through work being performed for
a specific client, made me realize that work I was doing was
not accessible to a lot of people; connected with WAI, met
CMN at conference half a year ago at conference in Oz; also
involved trying to help NZ government in mission to bring
80% of gov't services online by next year; working with
gov't to ensure that web presence is accessible; wrote
article on creating accessible FORMs using Domino for
largest Domino-oriented publication; have interest in 508
legislation in U.S.--looking at it keenly, want to be aware
of similar legislation around the world and how it
translates into code when you start building pages/sites;
monitoring WCAG developments and discussion; CMN asked me to
talk a bit about Lotus Notes & Domino--right, Charles?

CMN: yes, your experience in how things work now and how you
think ATAG will help--or won't help, as case may be

GO: does anyone else on the call have any experience with
Lotus as a development tool?

JT: please provide us with a bit of background

GO: Domino is what I call the "Swiss army knife" of
software: a multi-function tool; the ability to build web
sites using Domino was grafted onto Domino, so it's not a
pure development tool like HotDog or HomeSite; sits in a
category all by itself; I think, so it may be quite a
challenge to apply ATAG to Domino; constantly trying to
apply ATAG to Domino/Lotus environment; is quite hard,
because as a tool it sits out by itself and isn't easily
changed

WL: one of the main reasons for our work is that we want to
eradicate categorization--to make it clear that
accessibility is a natural consequence of doing good work

GO: that is quite clear from ATAG itself; there are some big
opportunities for Lotus/Domino to produce accessible HTML;
at moment, HTML it produces is a bit of a mess; current
version put together before ATAG reached recommendation; big
opportunity in next version to integrate features outlined
in ATAG; my concern is that they won't take up that
opportunity--example: noticed that the HTML that is rendered
when one creates a table using Domino, doesn't include TH
element, thereby precluding its use for accessibility;
contacted Cynthia Ice (sp?) from Domino--she seemed a bit
taken aback by my report, although that could be due to work
being done by IBM on accessibility; surprised by lack of
level of awareness about production of accessible HTML--
aware of accessibility issues with UI;

CMN: background: Cynthia is blind, and has trouble using the
client itself, so there is a lot of awareness of the
shortcomings of the tool

GO: IBM and Lotus have put a lot of work into ensuring that
Lotus Notes is accessible as an application, but less so
with production of accessible content; trying to get them
more aware of continually evolving ATAG Techniques; my role
is to agitate for accessible content production features
being integrated into the product

WL: difficult for 60 ton steamroller to change direction;
you are a part of spawning a new industry of spawning
accessible content because of policy requirements; same
thing happening at slower pace with tool tweaking

JT: impetus for redirecting steamroller was the GSA contract
with Lotus and its specific requirements; maybe we should
try to get GSA to push on this front as well (output of
tool)

WL: question of whether Lotus can do anything even if
willingness is there; tools for making tools are also more
complicated

GO: more of a tool user than a tool maker;

JT: what is rationale for sticking to Lotus or using it
exclusively

GO: haven't convinced myself fully that will stick to it; my
M.O. is that I'm quite conservative in realm of software;
know Lotus Notes & Domino inside and out; have seen things
in the tool that no other tools in the market have
(unrelated to accessibility); for example, rapid application
development a reality with Notes and Domino, because of
database back-end--not a relational database as such, but
allows you to put applications together very quickly;
clients like quick turn-around times

WL: does Cold Fusion do that too?

GO: yes, but more specific tools; Notes & Domino like a
Swiss army knife--can do email, can integrate with lots of
other applications, can write web apps with Domino; at a
point where want to produce accessible web sites and could
throw away Notes & Domino, but would rather get
accessibility built into Notes and Domino than abandon it;
don't want to lose opportunity to lead the charge in terms
of producing accessible content using Domino; great
opportunity given my knowledge of tool and knowledge picking
up on accessibility--want to produce accessible sites using
Domino as a development tool

JT: could you send a pointer to the article?

GO: it isn't on the web--at least not yet--but I could send
the text of the article to you

JT: please send it to the AU list <w3c-wai-au@w3.org>

// ACTION GO: send copy of article on producing accessible
sites with Domino to AU mailing list //

JT: what is Lotus/Domino market share

GO: 65 million notes & Domino users worldwide; penetration
into gov't very high--in NZ, a lot of government departments
use notes & Domino; understand similar in U.S.; investment
IBM & Lotus have put into Domino is enormous; if put mind to
producing more accessible content would do it well; very
well maintained, built, and tested tool, so have great
hopes; wish bar set by 508 was a bit higher to make tool
makers work a bit harder to ensure that the content is more
accessible

JT: unfortunately, 508 didn't reference ATAG at all

GO: in terms of end product (sites that are produced), I
should hope that someone is tasked with making tool
accessible vis a vis 508;

WL: more and more companies are hiring 508 compliance
monitors to ensure that what is being done meets 508
requirements; bar may seem pretty low, but compared to where
it was before WAI started, it's comparatively high

CMN: 508 compared to Australian law--different approach,
instead of saying here is the bar and the rules and when you
satisfy them, you're home free; Australian law dependent upon
state-of-the-art at the time, so accessibility of site/content 
constantly needs to be reassessed and monitored

GO: trying to get Lotus & Domino developers simply to
implement what is in ATAG; still threshing out features of
version 6 of Domino, so a good time to communicate with
them; keeping eye on discussion lists related to Domino to
keep accessibility issues in forefront;

JT: has Lotus made any progress in getting rid of
proprietary tags?  at one time, talking about translating
existing proprietary tags into standard HTML tags

GO: at the moment, the HTML Domino produces is a mess--has
FONT tags and other physical markup all over the place;
focus of tool has been "how does it look in the latest
version of IE?"--not much change to underlying algorithms
that produce the HTML in 3 or 4 years; don't know where they
are at vis a vis proprietary tags

WL: do you use Tidy?

GO: don't use it; Domino has non-standard approach--doesn't
produce HTML documents, but rather documents that are stored
inside Notes & Domino itself; HTML Tidy doesn't work when
templates embedded in application; one challenge I've set
myself is to try and establish ways of using ER tools with
Notes & Domino

JT: would you be willing to do an ATAG evaluation of Lotus'
web authoring tools?

GO: yes

JT: that would be great; that in and of itself would be a
good advocacy tool with Lotus

GO: very true

WL: is there an association of people that work with Domino
or design sites for gov't or advise them?

GO: business partner network that I'm not part of for mainly
financial reasons (NZ dollar following the Australian dollar
down!); there is a community of people who get together on
discussion groups to help each other out

CMN: as a Notes user, is there a user community of Notes
developers?  do they have much clout?

GO: Notes business partner community has most clout with
Lotus--more money you spending, the more clout you have;
U.S. gov't probably has the most clout with Lotus; mostly
trying to ask "smart" questions on discussion lists--that's
how I came into contact with Cynthia; Doug Wakefield has
given me a lead, but haven't been able to make contact;
found that when it comes to doing the actual work, most
people aren't interested unless there is some sort of
remuneration involved

CMN: do you have a list of the particular things you'd like
to have in Notes right now, and a list of things that you
would like to have that aren't covered by ATAG?

GO: answer to second question is no; looking at 7
guidelines, the one that jumped out as easy and very
powerful is "accessibility in documentation and help";
documentation for Domino/Lotus is excellent and
comprehensive; have teams of people working on it--critical
point of contact, and something that is necessary if going
to address accessibility of content they produce, need to
look at tool itself; even if didn't change tool itself at
this stage, there are ways of creating accessible content
with Lotus/Domino now, so minimal effort with highest
benefit to user community would be documentation on how to
create accessible content using Lotus/Domino right now

WL: second time I've heard this about a product this week--
heard the same thing about cleaning up FrontPage

GO: not a perfect solution by any manner or means, but a
good starting place; that's what I'm doing myself--
documenting how I hacked the tool in order to enable it to
produce accessible--or more accessible--content; people
react well to documentation and examples

JT: would you be willing to do an evaluation of Lotus
Notes/Domino against ATAG?

GO: if someone's willing to provide a bit of guidance, sure!

CMN: G-man, give me an action item to provide Graham with
the info he needs

// ACTION CMN: email GO with information about performing
evaluation and form it should take //
// ACTION GO: evaluate Lotus Notes/Domino against ATAG 1.0
//

JT: I really appreciate your volunteering to perform an
evaluation--will be a definite advocacy aid;

GO: been a great honor to be asked to be part of this
telecon--this is my first time officially participating in a
WAI forum

JT: thank you for attending and for offering to participate

WL: do we need a document on how to create "good" content
with a "bad" tool?

CMN: perhaps as a short-term solution; and speaking of the
short term, I've been trying to get a new Techniques
document published to the web all day--need to get it out
before I leave for CSUN; new draft hostage to connectivity
problems; content available linked from sources page--link
to source with latest content, as well as sources for XSLT
views; what would be missing is logos and the status

JT: is next week's meeting at noon?  no negative responses
on list to a switch to noon

CMN: ok by me--will confirm that the bridge is still
available

JT: I will post a "speak now or forever hold your peace"
post to the AU list--meetings will be for an hour only, from
noon until 1pm EST

// ACTION JT: post a "speak now or forever hold your peace"
post to the AU list alerting WG members that, effective
Monday, March 26, 2001, telecons will be for an hour only,
from noon until 1pm EST //

CMN: hoping that RealNetworks contact will be available next
week at noon--had scheduled for a different time, but will
try to rearrange

JT: who will be at CSUN?

ATAG WG members who will be at CSUN: JT & WL (whole thing);
CMN arriving on Thursday

// next meeting Monday, March 26, 2001 at 12pm U.S. EST //

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Received on Tuesday, 20 March 2001 01:59:10 UTC