Raw minutes of 15 June UA Guidelines

15 June 2000 UA Guidelines Teleconference

Present:
 Ian Jacobs (Chair/Scribe)
 Harvey Bingham
 Gregory Rosmaita
 Eric Hansen
 Tim Lacy
 Dick Brown

Regrets:

 Jon Gunderson
 Denis Anson
 Charles McCathieNevile
 David Poehlman
 Kitch Barnicle

Agenda [1]
[1] http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/w3c-wai-ua/2000AprJun/0475.html

Agenda:

1) Comments on new working draft? In particular?

  IJ: Did anyone review the document? 
  EH, GR: Only briefly.

  a) Definition of user agent ok?

  DB: "Software" is ok.
  No other objections.

  b) Issue 287: 3.3, 3.5, 3.6 change "turn on/off" to "freeze"
     http://cmos-eng.rehab.uiuc.edu/ua-issues/issues-linear.html#287
 
     IJ: We can delete these since it's already a P1 requirement
         in 4.6 to pause. Note that "animations" is more specific
         in 3.5, 3.6

     EH: Should 3.10 be expanded?

     IJ: We have 4.16 to configure the number of open viewports.
         We would need to incorporate the blinking / text info
         into 4.16.       

  Action IJ: Propose a new 4.6 with deleted 3.3, 3.5, 3.6.

  c) Definitions ok? (Synchronization, Control/Configure)

  EH: The only comment is that in the example (sync of audio
      presentation with captions); maybe need another example.

  Resolved: Make 4.16 "configure and control" number of open windows.

2) Proposals 

  a) Issue 286: Harmonize volume checkpoints (3.2, 3.4, 4.8, 4.10). We
     could even delete 3.2 and 3.4 since they are special cases of 4.8
     (as long as minimal requirement of 4.8 includes "silent").
     http://cmos-eng.rehab.uiuc.edu/ua-issues/issues-linear.html#286

   IJ: Don't know how to define "background audio". 
   GR: "Background audio" plays on document load. You don't have
       the same level of control for "background" audio as you do
       for other audio (e.g., that you would select to play). I can't
       stop or pause "background audio".

   IJ: That sounds like an implementation detail; user agents should
       allow turn on / off of all audio...whether it starts
       automatically on load or not.

   TL: If you're going to define that each audio channel should
       be configurable from 0 to some max.

   IJ: Do we have implementation experience for this?

   TL: In IE, you can turn off sounds. That would be independent of
       a UA speaking the page. They go through different code paths.
  
   GR: If I turn off sounds through the options, I turn of bg sounds
       and can't play sounds on demand.

   TL: I'm not sure. If you right-click on a sound object, that
       may force it to play. Usually, whatever drives your speakers
       is some level of mixer (that controls volume according to
       media type).

   IJ: What about on a per-object basis?

   TL: You'd have to be predictive of what the author intended.
       I want to avoid heuristics. How do we identify the different
       sound objects? Perhaps a menu that says "whatever this is, play
       this at volume x"? But this will still be independent of any
       external user agent that is speaking. If you use the 
       Windows media player as a standalone
       (video and sound) player, whenever it plays a clip, you
       have a volume control. I think the same when used as a plug-in.

   IJ: What about very short sounds?

   TL: You have background sounds, system sounds, and other families
       of sound components that could be activated from within a Web
       page.

   GR: And you have buffering, cue before/after, etc.
  
   GR: I don't want turning off audio (to suppress background audio)
       to suppress cue-before/cue-after sounds.

   HB: One related aspect is the need to synchronize this material.
       That synchronization can be a function of how fast the audio
       is displayed.
 
   IJ: Is background audio a particular track of a degenerate
       multimedia presentation (with static visual)?

   EH: If bg is related to "on load", we should say that in plain
       language.

   GR: Historically, background sounds are distinct from multimedia
       presentation audio tracks.

   HB: Some multimedia has a fixed frame rate.

   GR: A multimedia "event" is something that is initiated by
       the user. 

   IJ: I agree with TL that relative control of all audio
       sources from 0 to some level meets all the requirements.
       Global control of volume is an important special case of this.

   TL: At msdn, the volume attribute and property only apply to the
       "bgsound" attribute, which implies that if you have a
       multimedia clip, the html volume attribute (extension) 
       would not be applicable. Whatever is being used to play that 
       would have to control the volume independently. It's also
       read-only; you can't change the volume on the fly; it's set
       by the author.

   IJ: No "bgsound" in HTML 4.0. CSS2 aural style sheets (including
      'play-during') only in the context of synthesized speech.

   GR: Some pages use real audio as background sounds. This may
       cause my speech synthesizer or UA to crash.

   Proposed requirements:
     a) Turn on off all audio
        HB: Different from loading.
        GR: Maybe suggest that loading be suppressed...
     b) Turn on/off audio sources selectively
     c) Control the volume of all audio
     d) Control the volume of audio sources selectively

  Action TL: Ask MS Windows media people about possibility of
  independent volume control of audio sources.

  Action IJ: Talk to Madeleine about this.

  No resolution.

  b) Checkpoint 5.8: "benefit accessibility"
     http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/w3c-wai-ua/2000AprJun/0474.html

  Resolved: Adopt this proposal
  Action IJ: Incorporate change into document.

3) Issue 257: Minimal requirements:
   http://cmos-eng.rehab.uiuc.edu/ua-issues/issues-linear.html#257
   (Refer to http://www.w3.org/WAI/UA/2000/05/ua-minreqs)

  a) Single key (10.5) from Kitch
     http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/w3c-wai-ua/2000AprJun/0433.html

   Not discussed since Kitch absent.

  b) Fonts and colors (4.1, 4.2, 4.3, 4.4)
     http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/w3c-wai-ua/2000AprJun/0432.html

     IJ: I propose using system values.

     TL: We talk about this a lot at MS. The consensus is that
       there are so many ways people need to change colors and fonts, 
       we allow them total control. In IE, they pick up whatever the
       system offers.

     Resolved: Adopt proposed suggested requirements.
               Mention CSS implementations and generic font families.

     EH: I like the ability to of a temporary view of a configuration
         to ensure its accessibility, without trapping the user.

     IJ: Sounds like a new set of requirements. I hesitate to go there
         at this point. Checkpoint 10.7 includes a requirement to be
         able to return to browser default settings. It doesn't cover
         "ease" of returning to defaults.

  c) Audio/speech (4.8, 4.9, 4.11)
     http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/w3c-wai-ua/2000AprJun/0447.html

     HB: I think that users need to be able to arbitrarily make 
        speed slower or faster

     EH: Add a note, in the section on minimal requirements that
         there may be users who wish to have a greater range 
         (e.g,. greater than 500 words/minute).

     Action GR: Find out min/max rates of three available synthesizers.

     Resolved:
       a) Delete "and other articulation characteristics" from 4.11
       b) Refer to the list of CSS2 voice characteristic properties
          and quote the property names.
          HB: Speech rate is a good surrogate for gender.
          IJ: CSS doesn't specify a range for voice families.
          GR: Frequently, there are about 6 different voices used
              for orientation.
       c) Minreqs is the list of discrete values of those properties.


NOT COVERED IN THE MEETING

  e) Checkpoint 7.5: Proposed search minreq: case-sensitive forward.

  d) Checkpoints 6.1, 8.1, 2.7, 8.2, and 8.3
     
http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/w3c-wai-ua/2000AprJun/0448.html

  f) Others
     a) "Easy access": 10.8, 2.3
     b) Checkpoint 10.4: Input configuration
     c) Checkpoints 4.13 and 4.14: selection and focus highlight
     d) Checkpoint 9.3: Configuration of notification.

Continued Action items:

  1) IJ: Draft a preliminary executive summary/mini-FAQ for developers. 
          (No deadline.)

  2) CMN: Propose a technique that explains how serialization plus 
           navigation would suffice for Checkpoint 8.1.

  3) GR: Look into which checkpoints would benefit from audio examples
         in the techniques document.

Completed Action items:

  1) KB: Propose a minimum or preferred set of functions that should be 
          available to single command configuration
     Done:
     http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/w3c-wai-ua/2000AprJun/0433.html

  2) JG: Send proposal to Judy proposal for WG ftf meeting
     end September. Look for a host involved with multimedia or mobile.

-- 
Ian Jacobs (jacobs@w3.org)   http://www.w3.org/People/Jacobs
Tel:                         +1 831 457-2842
Cell:                        +1 917 450-8783

Received on Thursday, 15 June 2000 15:41:30 UTC