Re[2]: charter update with two year cycle

[Trimming the CC list]

I urge everyone to hang in there. I'm a little concerned about talks of 
walking away etc- don't go Katie :-)
We'll work out something that the group can use to walk the line between 
our needs and wants.

We'll even try to satisfy the Sage of Baltimore.

Thanks

Josh

------ Original Message ------
From: "David MacDonald" <david100@sympatico.ca>
To: "Katie Haritos-Shea" <ryladog@gmail.com>
Cc: "AlastairCampbell" <acampbell@nomensa.com>; "WCAG" 
<w3c-wai-gl@w3.org>
Sent: 07/10/2016 13:47:24
Subject: Re: charter update with two year cycle

>I think we need to understand the current WCAG model well before 
>deciding to do something different.
>
>A 2 year cycle is a completely different model than what WCAG 2 was 
>designed for. The Success Criteria were made to be technically agnostic 
>BECAUSE technology is moving fast and no standard can keep up with the 
>pace of technology advancement.  So the SCs have general statements 
>such as "All functionality is available with keyboard" and "all images 
>have text alternatives". We purposefully don't say terms specific to 
>technology. The reason for that is because we knew it would take a long 
>time to put out the standard and we didn't want to be out of date... we 
>would keep up to date through the techniques, and many of us worked 
>hard to keep the techniques as up to date as possible.
>
>Normative language takes a LONG time to get through. non normative 
>advice on how to meet the requirements of the normative language can be 
>updated frequently and easily. The good work of EO is an example of 
>keeping up to date with how best to meet the requirements of the SC in 
>today's context. Now naturally after a number of years those long term 
>SCs need to be revised, but they were designed to have a longer shelf 
>life than 2 years. I think we were hoping for 5-6 years... and we 
>succeeded. There were almost no complaints in that time frame.
>
>If we want to move to a 2 year cycle, that is a completely different 
>model and there is no need for the technology agnostic SC language. You 
>can say "use this JavaScrip handler, and this HTML5 tag" right in the 
>normative document ... and that gets us right back to the issue that we 
>had in 2002, two years after WCAG 1. Being out of date but not being 
>able to get new normative language quickly.
>
>Coming back to the question that started all of these cycles of work 
>for all of us discussing this, I propose that we simply remove the 
>sentence about "biannual" releases from the charter. We have no 
>obligation to say that. Let's get 2.1 finished. New people to the group 
>will learn a lot from the process, and let's re-evaluate at that point.
>
>Cheers,
>David MacDonald
>
>
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>On Fri, Oct 7, 2016 at 7:53 AM, Katie Haritos-Shea <ryladog@gmail.com> 
>wrote:
>>Alistair,
>>
>>Please do not think you have anything to do with my angst. You come 
>>across just fine.
>>
>>Those of us with experience in developing this standard, working to 
>>get it taken up in government regulations, and then imlementing them 
>>both inside and outside of government - do bring some informative 
>>points to the table as to how this is going to actually play out.
>>
>>I have been asking, all along, for a compromise between 2 and 10 years 
>>for a regular cycle...to which I hear crickets from those pushing for 
>>two years....
>>
>>Katie Haritos-Shea
>>703-371-5545
>>
>>
>>On Oct 7, 2016 6:55 AM, "Alastair Campbell" <acampbell@nomensa.com> 
>>wrote:
>>>HI Katie,
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>Firstly:
>>>
>>> > “This group, which has felt like home to me, has changed, and has 
>>>not been the open-armed welcoming place, where all were *heard* and 
>>>appreciated for their own perspective and experience.“
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>I’m sorry if my emails come across as argumentative or as not 
>>>listening, that is not my intent.
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>On this topic in particular (where I don’t have in-depth experience 
>>>with Government processes) I have tried to take an approach of 
>>>identifying the key differences and pushing on those to understand, 
>>>but that might come across too aggressively, I’m sorry.
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>For Wilco’s points (his email arrived as my previous one left), I 
>>>think the initial thing is to come up with a good ‘pitch’, and 
>>>discuss that with people like the one Gregg suggested.
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> > “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?”
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>For Governments that specify a version of a standard (which is not 
>>>all of them) and have very long time-frames: I would try pitching the 
>>>dot-releases as regular updates they do not have to take up, but they 
>>>should look to Silver / 3.0 as the next major release.
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> > “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?”
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>Unfortunately, the faster release of normative SCs is the issue, if 
>>>people still agree with the approach of having 2.1 rather than 
>>>extensions (which I do), then we are talking about updates to 
>>>normative WCAG.
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>If we try to get all the SCs from the tasks forces into 2.1, we are 
>>>in a situation of: Quick, Good, Cheap – pick any two.
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>·         Quick & Good: We’d need to hire several FTE people to work 
>>>on it, like WCAG 2.0 effectively had (is that an option?).
>>>
>>>·         Quick & cheap: Inconsistent guidelines that fail all 
>>>concerned.
>>>
>>>·         Good & cheap: Next version in 5+ years.
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>None of those are good options, so to me that is why we need an 
>>>iterative/dot-release approach, to get around the quick/cheap/good 
>>>issue by releasing new SCs in smaller chunks.
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>Am I missing something?
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>Cheers,
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>-Alastair
>>>
>