should IETF elevate 'news' URI to RFC?

There is a current draft of the specification for the 'news' and 'nntp' URI
schemes available as an Internet-Draft at

http://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-ellermann-news-nntp-uri-08

I have been asked to lend a voice saying that the Web needs this
scheme and IETF should act to give it RFC status.  Since my fingerprints
are on this draft, I have an ego incentive to see the document elevated.
Better I should have some facts and not just ego to base my advocacy on.

This scheme allows content that arises in a newsgroup and referenced
from a web page to be read as news rather than forcing the user to go
through a Web interface to the newsgroup.

The last time I checked, the answer came back that there is
disproportionate PWD participation in News as News as opposed to
the population at large.

http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/w3c-wai-ig/2004JulSep/thread.html#msg356

As best I can figure out, for someone using a screen reader, the
integration with the installed news-reader is significantly more usable
than going through a web browser and a web gateway to the newsgroup.

Is that still true?

Al