Today's minutes - March 8, 2017

http://www.w3.org/2017/03/08-apa-minutes.html


preview agenda with items from two minutes
janina: Lisa has joined the conversation to discuss concerns for the remote control specification.
There should be some time for discussion about CSUN discoveries

Ted: web4all/www status. Who is attending?

michael: Shadi is attending and has an accepted paper.

Ted: I got my approval yesterday. Will there be wcag or other discussions at www?

michael: there is a w3c track. We could attempt to insert topics into the track.

janina: it would be worth checking to see what elements in w3c track are relevant. such as wcag 2.1, CSS, and web payments.
next and future meetings

michael: someone from CSUN wants to join WCAG 2.1 and possibly web payments

janina: meetings will be at a different time next week. The US and Canada begin daylight savings time, so the time will be earlier. The other countries will switch at a later time.
APA at CSUN

Lisa: I need to reach out to Joanie about personalization. Time draft of wcag 2.1: use personalization semantics when available.
At CSUN, the benetech code sprint, someone made a code injection script to add semantics for the whole site.
I sat with Jamie on friday and were able to inject the semantics into the main menu bar. You could also load your own preference file.
It is currently in the BBC.com web site. It's a great first implementation.
How can we get this published ASAP

janina: doing something about personalization is part of the charter.

Lisa: i need a timeline.

janina: This is a cross group activity. It's not just ARIA or other groups and will include research. We will also need to worry about privacy. If it is all client side, it's ok. If it is server side, there may be concerns
We could do a call in 4-6 weeks to discuss this

Lisa: that could be useful to get perspective on related issues. There's standardizing semantics. there's standardizing personalization techniques.
We may need to update the issues paper and it could be moved to the APA

Ted: Is this the same as raising the floor?

Lisa: no, this is not the same as raising the floor. We are adding semantics to a web page to give context to personalization control, such as loading preferred symbol, features, have help scaffolding. On the other hand, we want personalization preferences.
It's more standardizing semantics. GPII is more of the handshake to raise usability and personalization.

<MichaelC> action-2099 due today
<trackbot> Set action-2099 Ping review of css table module level 3 due date to 2017-03-08.
APA Task Forces--COGA & TV Remote

janina: I've slotted the remote control discussion within a standing item. we need to coordinate the group with COGA and TV Remote sub groups. We need to be helpful to move items forward. we would need to do every 5-6 weeks, as we have so many task forces.
Lisa raised some items with media related APIs being produced in the w3c. Raising the points on that specification may not have been the best place for the concerns, so we held off to have this conversation. This discussion should solve where and how to address them.
<janina> https://www.w3.org/TR/tvcontrol-api/


Lisa: two use cases for my father, who has dementia. He was living alone and bought a new tv set. It came with a new remote control that was too complex and the terms/symbols were not familiar.
Learning new things is slowed with dementia. Learning new symbols on a remote control was past him.
I put a big sticker next to the ON button. It is set to BBC, he cannot move back and forth on the channel selector, so that is the only accessible channel.
two things people need: identify critical features. identify what they represent. For instance the on/off button. the volume and channel up/down
If the standard functions had standardized symbols and uses, the user could switch between remotes and devices and use them independently. This is the same for non-tv, for instance a heater/ac use the word "node" to switch between hot/cold.
people with <2000 words will not understand the use of "node". He wouldn't let anyone touch the thermostat, as he couldn't switch it back and forth between cold and hot.
These interfaces need to be usable or assistive care is not possible. It provides independence.

janina: a little more context. There's a digression in the last case. We should bear in mind the web of things can help to assist situations where you don't need to be a care giver to be in the location to give assistance.
It's an available vector for solutions, we need to monitor
the context we need to discuss, specific to remote control specifications. We had a call about a month ago to make sure objects work together. One reason for this meeting, is that while we did a good job of media accessibility requirements and I think we have most of what we need in html specification. we still need to cover audio and media.
different groups are handling different parts of the specification.
many of these groups are not familiar with the MAUR.
They need to be aware of these requirements early and what needs to be addressed. We need to know how these various pieces are meant to fit together.
Our goal is that everything we specify is met in W3C implementations.
One of the first specs to review was the TV Remote Control spec. There are some aspects that are unclear. There are elements missing for accessibility.
It's not clear to me that this spec is the place to define these ideas.
They have language selection, recording controls, age controls, etc. But not volume.
It's short of what a remote control actually contains. They are looking at a very basic browser controlling desktop implementation of web streaming content. The volume and so forth would be handled via different specifications.
These concerns could be integrated into the next MAUR version.

Lisa: The specification is obtuse. There could be advanced features that allow descriptions of channels, such as wild life. This improves discoverability.

Janina: this has been included.

Lisa: Where is the place for these concerns?

Michael: tv is important for cultural discussions.

Lisa: it's similar to accessible gaming, which allows people to join the conversations.

Gottfried: two approaches:
1. there needs to be a language describing functionalities, such as semantic tagging.
2. We define device classes. These classes define functions. This is an easier approach and works better with Internet of Things.
the disadvantage: they only interface with the class within their definition.
TV is a low-level class that can feed visual and audio controls via scripting.
we need to think about: is there a way to think about defining a layer that has semantic definitions. It makes things more complex.
the question to Lisa: we don't need to ask what are the most critical functions, do we need this upper layer of semantic description?

Joanie: When I look at the spec, as a developer, when I build a remote and want to create a cognitively easy to understand remote... I as a developer need to build the logic that makes the interface friendly.
Gottfried said, do we want to add a layer. I think this is more than a tv remote spec. There needs to be a broader way to say what this remote represents.
If a user has a screen reader, the SR should say "blah blah blah toggle button pressed" the SR needs to know what this toggle represents.
There needs to be a context and purpose for user interface controls.

Ted: I have a question, should this be defined by W3C or industry specification?

janina: W3C is HTML5 based specification. If the remote is HTML5 based, the W3C should be the one creating the specification.

Lisa: I am convinced about this not being the location. It's important to look at the broader population.

Janina asked what role to play in the specification. Perhaps the context of the controls, not just remote but also IoT overlap. Should we schedule a call on the APA to discuss architectures and how to remote the integrations?

janina: I think this is a good discussion. I will explore setting up the meeting: who should be at the table? Gottfried, Ted, Joanie, Jason White, Ralph, Rich,
obviously Lisa
Who else
<Lisa_Seeman> thank you Janina

Ted: John Foliot

janina: I want to re-issue a CFC and rephrase what I wrote. I could ask more questions and get more clarification on handling accessibility. they talk about subtitles, but not captions.
the alternative audio track may be descriptions. They don't seem to be aware of legal concerns in the US that makes it easy to discover captions.
we need them to reference the MAUR
we need to push them harder.
This is the first public working draft, so we have some time.
Any further thoughts before moving on?
We don't have time for actions and there are no new publications.
there has been some feedback on the self-assessment tool
Thank you for a good hour, glad we cleared the air and came up with good solutions to move forward. The time will shift next week due to time shift in Boston.




Ted Drake | Principal Engineer, Intuit Accessibility

Received on Wednesday, 8 March 2017 18:03:50 UTC