Re: Clarification of process for raising html5 accessibility related issues

The following is a related message from Jason White relayed here with
Jason's permission:

On 6/13/08, Jason White <jason@jasonjgw.net> wrote:

> On Fri, Jun 13, 2008 at 11:28:16AM +0200, Robert J Burns wrote:
>> I'm all in favor of us clearing up the process surrounding the WG, but
>> I don't want to endorse Mike Smith's unreasonable position regarding
>> the issue tracker. The issues Gregory added on my behalf are perfectly
>> within established norms for adding issues to the issue tracker. If
>> their are substantive objections to those issues, then the discussion
>> should focus on the substantive objections (i.e., what problems would
>> solving these issues cause for users, what confusion could solving
>> these issues cause for authors, what difficulties would implementors
>> face in implementing solutions to these issues, etc.).
>
> I agree this is where the priorities should lie. It is more important to fix
> the HTML working group's issue tracking practices than to discuss, on this
> list, ways of working around their inadequacies.
>
> While it is possible for a working group not to track all issues raised
> during
> the early stages of the development of a spec, this practice needs to be put
> in place in later stages of the W3C process so that the group can formally
> respond to all issues raised in comments submitted. However, with a large
> and
> complex specification such as HTML 5, I would be concerned that unless
> issues
> are tracked carefully from an early stage, there is a very real risk that
> important problems could easily be lost. After all, the purpose of an issue
> tracker is to ensure that this doesn't happen and that decisions are
> documented sufficiently; and as the number of issues grows, this becomes
> increasingly necessary.
>
> If issue tracking isn't carried out properly from the start, then problems
> which are discussed but, for one reason or another, not addressed, are
> likely
> to emerge again later in the process, where dealing with them can be much
> more
> painful. No reasonable working group participant wants a large number of
> difficult issues to arise at Last Call or later that could have been more
> adequately dealt with earlier. Last Call, Candidate Recommendation and
> Proposed Recommendation are challenging enough as it is, without a host of
> issues that have previously been raised but then overlooked or
> disregarded.
>
> Also, having significant, dissatisfied constituencies among those who will
> implement or otherwise use a spec, is just asking for formal objections or
> negative votes as the W3C process proceeds; so this, too, is precisely a
> situation which it is rational for working group participants who are
> committed to the success of the process to ensure is avoided.
>
> Of course, HTML is a large spec, and tracking the issues adequately is a
> correspondingly difficult job. However, the working group is also a large
> one,
> which should make it possible to divide up the problem among participants so
> as to reduce the over-all burden.

-- 
Laura L. Carlson

Received on Saturday, 14 June 2008 03:29:20 UTC