Re: 48-Hour Call for Consensus (CfC): Publish COGA Wide Review

Hi Janina and APA WG,

Thanks for the chance to review. Several comments follow.

I'm unclear what the timeline is, since I'm seeing a 48-hour call in the 
subject line, a deadline below of Tuesday May 3 (perhaps Sunday the 3rd, 
or Tuesday the 5th?), and I'd heard of a hoped-for publication date of 
today, April 30th and see that on the current editors' draft.

I do have several concerns that I think should be addressed before the 
document is published for wide review, as I believe these could create 
misunderstandings as to expectations that W3C WAI may be setting with 
the broader community unless these are clarified first. Most of these 
concerns relate to AGWG's scope of oversight of the COGA TF rather than 
APA's, but given my uncertainty on the publication timeline, I wanted to 
bring these to APA's attention as well as AGWG's.

First, it is great to see how far the document has come -- it is clearer 
throughout, and from my perspective has extensive amounts of useful 
information in an area that is greatly needed.

Second, it is quite lengthy, and if APA and AGWG support putting this 
out for wide review, think that it is worth reading through, even if, 
with regard to substance, we may be relying on wide review to provide 
detailed feedback on the substance.

My concerns are primarily with the abstract, and the policy section.

  * The abstract does not appear to adequately represent the scope or
    contents of the document, and it gives no indication of how this
    document relates to any other W3C WAI accessibility guidance. Unless
    the abstracted is clarified and updated, I think we would should
    expect confusion around whether this document is a replacement for
    part or all of WCAG 2.x ; whether it's an entirely non-matching set
    of new requirements that now double the compliance picture for
    groups seeking to conform to accessibility requirements; or some
    other relationship to WAI's existing accessibility guidance. Any of
    these could detract from the progress evident in this document. I
    therefore recommend clarifying and updating the abstract, including
    explaining the relationship to existing WAI guidance.
  * It is unusual to have policy recommendations embedded in a W3C
    technical report, and particularly unusual to have those in a
    Note-track document. The policy guidance that is suggested in
    Appendix C doesn't describe how this guidance relates to any
    existing WAI guidance, and I think it needs to before it goes for
    wide review so that misunderstandings don't emerge. Nevertheless,
    the content of the policy appendix appears useful and relevant, for
    instance highlighting how this guidance could be taken up in
    policies for emergency services. One possibility would be to move
    that section to a separate document; another would be provide more
    clarification of the intention of this section, or even adjust the
    name and tone of this appendix. (I'm wondering if "Considerations
    for uptake in different contexts" would be more accurate heading for
    this section.) But I think addressing this issue before publication
    would reduce chances of misunderstandings that may be difficult to
    walk back.

Again, addressing these two concerns fall more under the purview of 
AGWG, but I think APA should be aware of these if you are each running a 
CfC ahead of First Public Working Draft publication.

Thank you for your consideration,

- Judy

On 4/28/2020 3:39 PM, Janina Sajka (janina@rednote.net) wrote:
> Colleagues:
>
> This is a Call for Consensus (CfC) to the Accessible Platform
> Architectures (APA) Working Group proposing a second
> wide review Draft publication of:
>
> Making Content Usable for People With Cognitive and Learning
> Disabilities
>
> https://raw.githack.com/w3c/coga/changes-after-0327/content-usable/index.html
>
> This document has been in development over many years in our (joint)
> Cognitive and Learning Disabilities (COGA) Task Force. We appreciate and
> support their desire for a second wide review round before seeking to
> finalize the document as a W3C Note.
>
> ***Action to Take***
>
> This CfC is now open for objection, comment, as well as statements of
> support via email. Silence will be interpreted as support, though
> messages of support are certainly welcome.
>
> If you object to this proposed action, or have comments concerning this
> proposal, please respond by replying on list to this message no later
> than 23:59 (Midnight) Boston Time, Tuesday 3 May.
>
> IMPORTANT: If you have concerns or comments you believe should be
> addressed before a public review publication, please note them in your
> response on this thread but also please copy your comments to
> public-coga-comments@w3.org.
>
> NOTE: This Call for Consensus is being conducted in accordance with the
> APA Decision Policy published at:
>
> http://www.w3.org/WAI/APA/decision-policy
>
> As COGA is a joint Task Force of APA and of the Accessible Guidelines
> Working Group (AGWG), a concurrent CfC is in process at AGWG. Members of
> APA who are also members of AGWG are encouraged to be sure to register
> their responses in both groups.
>
> Janina
>
-- 
Judy Brewer
Director, Web Accessibility Initiative
at the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C)
105 Broadway, Room 7-128, MIT/CSAIL
Cambridge MA 02142 USA
www.w3.org/WAI/