(FAST) Framework for Accessible Specification of Technologies update

Hi all,

[+ APA chairs and Shadi]

Michael and I are currently working on iterating the content of the 
FAST. The Framework for Accessible Specification of Technologies (FAST) 
advises creators of technical specifications how to ensure their 
technology meets the needs of user with disabilities. It addresses 
primarily web content technologies but also relates to any technology 
that affects web content sent to users, including client-side APIs, 
transmission protocols, and interchange formats. The idea is that this 
document can be used by various W3C groups to do horizontal reviews of 
their specifications to check if that spec can successfully support any 
given accessibility user need.

As you may know, this document takes the form of an inventory of user 
needs, and a draft checklist that is used in horizontal review. [1] [2]

[1] https://w3c.github.io/apa/fast/#inventory-user-needs
[2] https://w3c.github.io/apa/fast/checklist.html

The inventory of user needs is designed to be a single set - and from 
this set of user needs comes requirements that are to be represented as 
the checklist.
These items are draft and we are working on iterating the current list 
of user needs, relating those to the checklist items and Michael is 
building a data base application that can show the one to one, one to 
many type relationships between various requirements, user cohorts and 
technologies, user agents, authoring tools.

As it stands, from these user needs there are particular requirements 
that relate to specific user cohorts - such as low vision, deaf, 
cognitive etc. By studying these relationships we can see where specific 
user needs are covered by various technologies, user agents etc as well 
as where there are gaps. Why is this useful?

* This work will be potentially helpful in determining where future work 
in various W3C specifications needs to be focused by identifying these gaps.
* We can use this to determine what is sufficient in determining when a 
specification claiming a specific user need is met (or not) by a given 
technology.
* Some of these needs may also be addressed by existing work such as 
XAUR, RAUR etc.

You can see our current updated branch that contains a more consolidated 
set of user needs that Michael and I are working on here. [3]

[3] http://raw.githack.com/w3c/apa/user-needs-restructure/fast/index.html

We want to use this to kick start a discussion within the Functional 
Needs sub group on this work and how it relates to current work in the 
Silver TF on WCAG 3. Charles Hall has also already done a lot of work on 
the user needs side, which is super helpful and we need to work an 
optimal way of presenting that and expressing that in our upcoming database.

Some questions to consider:

* Are there any user needs missing from the current list?
* Is a horizontal or flat list sufficient to generate checklist 
requirements from?
* If not, why? And what should it look like?

Regarding this question  - one possibility is nested sets of more 
specific user needs that have a root or parent. If we discuss this, some 
questions are:

** What does level 2 / level 3 look like?

So these are some things for us to discuss - and Michael will be in 
touch shortly with some more details regarding kick starting this work 
again in the Functional Needs Sub group.
This work is important, as it is a way of connecting the work in 
Silver/WCAG 3 - with other user needs work W3C/WAI are doing in XR, RTC 
applications and more.

Any comments or questions please let us know, thanks.

Josh
-- 
Emerging Web Technology Specialist/Accessibility (WAI/W3C)