Re: charter update with two year cycle

I think Gregg, David and Katie have described my own concerns much better
then I could have. Just the fact that there are a lot of people with these
concerns mean it should be addressed. We've seen the arguments and they
haven't been convincing either way. So we need to look for a solution.

To the pro-2 year people, is there anything you can think of that can help
address the concerns of the people who are against it?

And for the people against the 2-year release, are there anything you can
think of that would allow for faster release of success criteria, while
keeping to a 5+ year WCAG update schedule?

Let's see if we can solve this people :)

Wilco

On Fri, Oct 7, 2016 at 5:26 AM, Gregg Vanderheiden <
gregg@raisingthefloor.org> wrote:

> Good thoughts Alastair
>
>
> The one thing to keep in mind though — is that a regulatory standard is
> completely different than a technical one.    To change what technologies
> you use only requires a decision of the technology authorizers.  To change
> a regulation requires years of vetting, review by all of the agencies,
> economic impact reports,  review by the white house office of management
> and budget etc.    It is a very very long process.   Also technical
> standards are all voluntary. Even the companies using them can use them or
> not or parts or whatever.   Regulations are totally different.      WCAG is
> a guideline not a regulation but if you want it to be picked up in
> regulations you need to live with those timelines.   look at 508.   How
> long was it between its revisions.   And even when the decision was made to
> change it, it took more than half a decade to make the change.  The new one
> is coming out soon (months) - and it will be a long time for the next one.
>        Even with a will to update it more often - it will take a long time
> to vet and get approvals for any revisions.   And each time you release a
> new version — you reset the clock and the vetting process needs to proceed
> anew.    Worse yet - if it keeps changing - there will be great pressure by
> those who don’t want it, to keep advocating to wait for the next one.   Or
> claiming that the standard is not stable because it keeps changing.
>
> So it is kind of complicated.
>
> But the people I would talk to are those at the Access Board.   They
> actually have a better idea of what is or isnt possible and timing etc than
> I or anyone else on this list.   Give David Capozzi a call and talk to him.
>    If what he says agrees with my comments — the good for me.   If it
> differs from what I said - believe him.   I am speaking from experience and
> the past.  He can speak from both experience and the past AND a much better
> understanding of the present and the future than I can.
>
>
>
> *gregg*
>
> On Oct 6, 2016, at 10:28 AM, Alastair Campbell <acampbell@nomensa.com>
> wrote:
>
> I echo the hear, respect and trust comment from John, but also think that
> this is true:
> “*working on an "All or Nothing" sum-total proposition, where they
> believe​ we need to get *all* the new proposed Success Criteria into the
> next dot release of WCAG for fear of "missing out"*.“
>
> I’m fairly ambivalent about the time between 2.1 and 2.2, but there are
> two main problems I’m picking up:
> 1.       Scale of work needed.
> 2.       Impact on / take up of stakeholders such as governments.
>
> *Scale of work:*
> Even from outside the process I could see that a huge amount of work that
> went into WCAG 2.0, and if I thought 2.1 was going to need the same level
> of work I would agree with Gregg.
>
> There is an implicit assumption in the 2.1 approach that might not be
> obvious to people who haven’t been involved in Agile projects in the last
> few years. I could also be wrong that this is an assumption, so let’s make
> it explicit.
>
> Apologies to everyone very familiar with Agile, but for everyone else: the
> assumption is that *you fit the work into a time-box, and release what is
> done in that time*.
>
> If there are only 3 new SC that get consensus by the deadline, then 2.1
> may have only 3 new SC. Given the time between 2.0 and 2.1, I think we can
> manage a lot more than 3, but that is an assumption of the process.
> (I appreciate that the guidelines need to work as a whole, so we should
> also get consensus on the whole at each dot release, not just the
> individual SCs.)
>
> The rest of the W3C appears to be working in this way, I suspect we need a
> very good case not to follow suit.
>
> *Governments / legal stakeholders*
> This is an important point and important stakeholders, but I’m not sure
> how much of a problem it will be to have more regular updates.
>
> How do Governments deal with changing technical specifications, e.g. Do
> they still specify HTML 4.01 because they haven’t updated? Do they say
> latest version?
>
> I know accessibility guidelines are different, but they are also trying to
> keep up with technical specifications and changes. Touch interfaces weren’t
> popular in 2008, now they are ubiquitous.  We can produce more techniques
> and understanding, but many of the new SCs are for things that were not
> around previously, covering gaps in the normative text.
>
> If it is pitched to Governments as a steady progressions of a standard
> that will be backwards compatible, it is up to them to decide at what point
> they want to take a snapshot. That is assuming they can’t do what the UK
> does and simply not specify a particular standard. In the UK a legal case
> would ask “what is the standard in the industry”, to which the obvious
> answer at the moment is WCAG 2.0 AA. A year or two after WCAG 2.1 that
> answer would change.
>
> At the EU level their Government procurement guidelines say things like
> “Where ICT is a web page, it shall satisfy WCAG 2.0 Success Criterion 1.4.4
> Resize text.” [1]
>
> If that anchor point is still there, it should not cause them issues.
>
> I have to admit I have a slight allergy to how big government
> organizations work (it sends me to sleep), but it seems like the dot
> release approach should work…
>
> Cheers,
>
> -Alastair
>
> 1] http://mandate376.standards.eu/standard/technical-requirements/resize-
> text
>
>
>


-- 
*Wilco Fiers* - Senior Accessibility Engineer